


Sins of the Father

by CorvetteClaire



Series: In the Mirror [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blood and Violence, Consensual Sex, Forced Prostitution, Heavy Angst, Hogwarts Sixth Year, M/M, Romance, Sexual Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-07-03 09:51:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 78,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15816486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorvetteClaire/pseuds/CorvetteClaire
Summary: Draco is standing on the top of the North Tower with his wand pointed at Dumbledore. How in bleeding hell did he get here?An alternate version of Harry's Sixth Year at Hogwarts. Harry is intent on saving Draco from his father's machinations, but when Draco leaves Hogwarts, Harry can't protect him. And Voldemort has ways of forcing people to do his bidding.This is part one of a two-part series. The second part picks up the story after the war.





	1. The Boy in the Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing HP fic before the Fifth book was published and the wizarding world went dark. As a result, even when I made bad stuff happen to our boys, my stories tended to have a basic innocence that fit with those earlier books. Since I found this archive, I've been reading lot of darker, edgier fics that take a far more mature view of the characters (and I don't just mean sexually). I'm intrigued by this view and have decided to give it a try.
> 
> So, here's my first attempt at a darker HP/DM fic. I'm new at this, and I have a tendency to slide into my familiar writing style when I'm not looking. So bear with me, if I slip up.

****_— Malfoy Manor —_

 

He studied his reflection, a slight crease between his silvered brows. The face looking back at him was the same one he’d seen every day for sixteen years, and he understood it as little now as he had the very first time he’d looked in this mirror. He could still picture it—a toddler climbing onto the heavy chair, small hands grasping the edge of the ornate dressing table, eyes of clear grey gazing in surprise at the huge mirror, and a matching pair of eyes staring back out of it at him. He’d been surprised then. Now he was just confused.

It was a narrow face with clean, aristocratic lines and a chin just a little too pointed for real strength. Eyes like arctic ice under curved brows and long, almost colorless lashes. A wide, graceful, expressive mouth—the only part of him that ever betrayed his emotions—lips now thinned with concentration. And all of it framed by sleek, shining, white-blond hair that brushed back from his temples and, every so often, when it forgot itself and what was due its aristocratic lineage, fell over his forehead to tickle his eyebrows.

His father’s face, but with just a trace of his mother about the edges, softening it, making it more feminine.

He cocked his head to one side, studying his reflection through narrowed eyes and turning that word over in his mind, letting it lie on his tongue. _Feminine._ It didn’t taste wrong, not to him, but it made him wonder.

Was that what his father saw when he looked at him? Was that why he curled his lip, let his eyelids droop over his frigid eyes, and ordered his son to make himself _presentable_ in that cutting way? Was Father afraid that others would see the hint of feminine grace in his features, in the turn of his head, in the way he wore his robes? Was he ashamed of his son?

_If he only knew._

A sour smile lifted one corner of his mouth at that thought. The expression hardened his features, driving the ghost of his mother from them and leaving them all Lucius. All cold and vicious and secretly craven. Such a marvelous birthright. If only he were worthy of it.

He lifted a white hand, signet ring glinting in the candlelight, to pick a stray hair from the front of his dress robes. They were, like everything else he owned, flawless and expensive. The black velvet collar stood up around his pale throat, brushing his jaw, framing his marble-white face. Silver stitching gleamed opulently against the rich fabric, picking up the gleaming lights in his eyes and hair. When he rose to his feet, the heavy fabric fell gracefully from his shoulders and clung slightly to his legs as he moved. It felt luxurious. Maybe a touch pompous. But that was what his parents were going for, he was sure.

He paused, giving himself a final once-over in the mirror. _Marvelous. I look like a wealthy undertaker._

With another sour half-smile, he swept out of the room.

He heard voices from the parlor, as he approached. His father was standing just outside the room, clearly waiting for him and looking none too happy. The grey eyes—so much like his own, yet so alien to him—swept over him from the crown of his silver-gilt head to the fine leather of his shoes, and he grunted. The lift of his father’s lip told him that the older man was firmly restraining himself from making some snide remark, though what, in all honesty, he could find to object to in his appearance, his son could not fathom.

“You’re late, Draco. How long does it take to put on a set of dress robes?”

“You told me to make myself presentable.” Draco halted a few feet away from his father and only just stopped himself from spreading his arms to display his immaculate person. Father would not appreciate the insolence in that gesture. Instead, he asked in a carefully level tone, “Are you satisfied?”

Lucius favored him with another critical look, then nodded once and caught his arm to draw him closer. Peering back through the open doors, he said, “Do you see that man by the hearth? The one speaking to Nott?”

“Yes.”

“He is the reason for this party. I need his support at the Ministry and our master wants to cement his allegiance.”

Draco said nothing to this, just gazed at the figure on the far side of the room with cool detachment. Another of his father’s political connections, which meant, another potential recruit for the Dark Lord’s army. Not a Death Eater yet, or this currying of favor would not be necessary. A tall man, lean and muscular, broad through the shoulders, with the stance of a trained fighter or athlete. He had dark eyes, set deep under frowning brows, with a gleam of dangerous intelligence in them, and when he quirked a non-smile at Nott, his eyes seemed to harden. Not one of Father’s fat, sweating, paper-pushing drones, then, but potentially a real asset in the coming war.

_Handsome,_ Draco thought, _and dangerous. Father won’t be able to control this one._

His eyes skimmed the rest of the room, taking in the faces he recognized and those he did not. Most of them were men he knew were already bound to Voldemort—with the Dark Mark or without—and he instinctively tried to withdraw from them. After so many months at Hogwarts, safe from his father and his machinations, he found it almost physically sickening to be so close to these people he both loathed and feared. He wanted to escape, but there was nowhere to go. He was trapped here for more than two months, so he would have to make the best of it.

His father was still talking, filling the air with his repugnant words, and Draco forced himself to listen. Self-preservation depended on it. “…what it takes to make this happen. No need to mention it to your mother.”

“No, sir,” he replied automatically. Mention what? What had he missed while he’d been wool-gathering?

“She’s unhappy that we had to throw the party so soon after that business at the Ministry and is worrying about appearances.”

Draco watched his mother swanning about the room with regal charm and thought she was doing no such thing, but he didn’t bother to argue.

“I haven’t shared our real goals with her. It would only add to her worries.”

“Of course.” The real problem was that Mother was frightened and angered by Father’s choice to rejoin the Dark Lord. She hated having to invite all these Death Eaters into her home and would pitch a fit if she knew Father was trying to recruit a new one over drinks in her best parlor. Draco didn’t blame her.

“Get in there, then. Talk to the man. Get me something to work with.”

Draco nodded and slipped through the doors, into the press of bodies. He hesitated by the doors, getting his bearings, and lifted a glass of champagne from a passing tray. It was balanced on the head of a house-elf who bobbed in an obsequious bow before scurrying off. He took a slug of the sparkling wine, letting it tickle his nose, then swallowed and squared his shoulders. Into the fray.

 

The man saw him approaching and broke off his conversation with Nott to offer him a lazy, beckoning smile. Draco immediately recognized the look and felt an answering jolt, somewhere down in his crotch, where he absolutely should _not_ be noticing this man. He took another drink—a shot of Dutch courage—as he approached.

“Young Mr. Malfoy, I assume.” His voice was deep and smooth. A voice meant to persuade. “Your hair gives you away.”

Draco smiled his best ‘ _I’m just a boy following eagerly in my hideous Death Eater father’s footsteps because I’m too innocent to know better_ ’ smile and stepped up to the stranger.

Merlin, he was tall! And _hot!_ Draco had to tilt his chin up to look in his face and immediately wished he’d stayed farther back. Too late, now. He’d have to brazen it out and ignore the way the man was stripping him with his eyes.

“How do you do, Sir?”

“I’m doing a deal better, now that you’ve driven off that bore, Nott.”

Draco couldn’t help smiling at that. Nott _was_ a bore. He was also a bully and a sadist and a moron, but Draco didn’t mention that.

The stranger caught his smile and his own widened. “You’ve just returned from Hogwarts?” Sipping his champagne to mask his face, Draco nodded. “I understand you had a bit of excitement there this year.”

“A bit. More at the Ministry than at the school,” he said, laying on the innocence a little thicker.

“Ye-es.” It came out as a drawl. Suddenly, a large, square hand dropped to Draco’s shoulder. “Thanks to The Boy Who Lived and his little friends, eh?”

Draco felt his face stiffen. “Was it?”

The man smiled down at him and twitched his head toward the french doors that opened onto the formal garden. “Walk with me, young Malfoy. This room is a too hot for my tastes, and I want to hear more about this… excitement at the Ministry.”

The hand on his shoulder compelled Draco to follow. He fell into step at the man’s side, opening a path through the throng of guests, obeying the pressure of those fingers. Draco didn’t like being steered like a broomstick. He didn’t like being marched away from his parents and their guests. He didn’t like the implication that he knew more about what had gone on at the Ministry than he possibly could or that he would reveal secrets about Harry Potter and his friends. But his father’s orders were fresh in his mind, so he let the man lead him out of the room, into the night garden.

It was certainly cooler out here, and much quieter. Draco sucked in a deep, cleansing breath, as if he could banish the clinging stench of Death Eater from his lungs, and followed the man down a curving path toward the distant greenhouse. An albino peacock strode over the grass toward them, almost glowing in the moonlight, dragging its immense tail, its head bobbing forward and back with each step.

_Bloody stupid things,_ he thought, as he watched the creature warily from the corners of his eyes. _And vicious. Only an arrogant prick like my father would let them run loose in the garden and attack people._

The man didn’t waste a glance on the peacock but led Draco through the glimmering darkness to the pale, softly shining bulk of the greenhouse. The door was unlocked, and it opened easily under his hand. Then Draco was stepping over the threshold, into the dim, damp, warm space that smelled of earth and growing things.

The man did not turn on a light. He stepped closer to Draco, forcing him to edge backward until his hip nudged a potting table and he halted. The air was uncomfortably thick.

“You don’t want to talk about Harry Potter, do you, young Malfoy?”

Draco shrugged. “I don’t know much about him. We’re in different Houses and we’re not exactly friends.” He forced a note of childish bitterness into his voice. “He and his chums think Slytherins are all scum.”

“Well.” The man stepped still closer, and Draco felt his hot breath on his face. “They’ll learn their mistake, soon enough. But some of us,” his hand came up and stroked through Draco’s hair, “know real quality when we see it.”

“Sir…”

“Come now, Draco.” It was the first time the man had used his name, and Draco didn’t like the sound of it in his mouth. A frown drew his brows together, but if the man saw it, he didn’t let on. “A boy as lovely as you must know what he’s worth.”

“I’m… I’m not…”

“Not lovely?” the man taunted. His fingers combed through Draco’s hair again, then tightened around a handful of it. “Not worth a favor or two? Not willing to make the most of his assets?” The fingers trailed down to his cheek and caught on his lower lip. “I’d never have thought it of a Malfoy.”

Before Draco had time to withdraw, the man leaned in for a kiss.

It was not his first kiss, by any means. Not his first kiss from another man, or even the first time one of his father’s cronies had forced one on him when no one was looking. Draco should have known from the moment he felt the man’s gaze on him that this was coming, but somehow, he had not prepared himself for it. The firm press of lips against his, the clutch of fingers in his hair, the fiercely hot breath on his cheek all seemed to take him by surprise. He opened his mouth to protest and nearly choked on the tongue that plunged into his throat. He tried to recoil, to turn his head away, but the hand in his hair held him ruthlessly in place. Then the larger body moved up hard against his and shoved him back against the table.

Draco stumbled, reaching behind him to catch himself. A pot tumbled to the ground and shattered. The man leaned into him, forcing his spine to arch painfully, and he instinctively lifted a foot to ease the strain on his back. Suddenly, the man was between his thighs. An erection roughly the size of a Beater’s bat ground into his loins. He uttered something that could only be described as a whimper, and the man abruptly broke the kiss.

“You can suck it or you can ride it this first time. But I will be in you tonight, my lovely.”

Draco stared at him, his mouth dry with fear, no words coming. The man leaned into him still harder, fumbling with his free hand to ruck up Draco’s robe, as he claimed another plundering kiss.

Draco was frozen in panic. He had no idea what to do. He’d brought no wand with him and, in any case, could not attack his father’s guest with fists or magic. Even if the man were not inches taller than he was and pounds heavier, even if Draco could get a knee into his bollocks and lay him out in a groaning huddle on the ground, he didn’t dare. Not with the vision of his father’s cold, sneering face in front of him. For Merlin knew, even if Father might forgive him for physically attacking a guest to protect his own honor, he’d never forgive him for being in this position to begin with. He was going to get buggered in a greenhouse, and there wasn’t a blessed thing he could do about it.

The man had his robe up around his waist and was working on his trousers, still half choking him with his tongue, when a lamp suddenly flared to life. Draco turned his head, tearing out of the kiss, wild with mingled panic and hope, to see his father standing in the doorway. His attacker turned at the same time, but he did not relax his posture or let go of his fistful of silver-gilt hair. Draco was thoroughly, humiliatingly pinned beneath the man’s body and his father’s scathing glare. He shot a look of desperate pleading at his father, but Lucius flicked his eyes away and fixed them on his attacker, without ever acknowledging Draco.

“May I speak to you outside for a moment?” Lucius said, his voice cool and courteous.

The man straightened up and let go of Draco’s hair. “Of course.”

Lucius pinned his son with an arctic stare, making Draco squirm in his own skin, as the other man stepped around him and into the darkness. “Don’t move.”

Draco swallowed and pushed himself fully upright. He watched his father step out of the greenhouse and close the door. He absentmindedly straightened his robe, and he combed his hair back into place with shaking fingers. Then he simply stood there, waiting. What else could he do, after all?

He had no idea how long it took. He was too numb to register the passage of time. He only knew that, eventually, when the negotiations were complete, the door opened again and his father ushered his assailant through it.

“How long will you need?” Lucius asked in the same polite tone he had used before.

“A few hours will suffice.”

_What are you doing?!_ Draco screamed helplessly behind his blank, white face. _What the fuck are you doing?!_

“You’re welcome to return to the Manor. The house-elves will prepare his room.”

“Thank you, but not tonight. Perhaps next time.”

Lucius merely nodded, his eyes touching Draco briefly and shifting away.

_Don’t leave me, Father! Please! Please don’t do this!_

He backed out of the greenhouse and closed the door.

_Oh, Merlin. Oh, fuck. Help me… Someone, please, help me…_

The man turned to Draco with a smile. “Where were we? Oh, yes, you were going to choose. Well, my lovely, what’s it to be?”

Draco just stared at him, frozen. His eyes were open unnaturally wide, his pupils dilated with fear, his mouth now so dry that he could not swallow. The pleas for help kept spooling through his head, unheard and unanswered, while the man who had just bought him from his father stepped nearer.

The man’s eyes gleamed unpleasantly, and his lips tilted in a predatory smile. “A suck or a ride? Quickly, now, before I take it out of your hands.”

_He’s handsome. Hot. I wanted him._ Draco licked his lips and let his eyes skim down the man’s body. _I can do this. I can… Oh, fuck._

Slowly, silently, his body moving without instructions from his gibbering brain, Draco sank to his knees on the floor and reached for the man’s robe.

_Oh, gods. Please please please please someone help me…_

He opened the man’s flies, freed his cock—as huge and hard as it had felt when pressed to his belly.

_Please, please, don’t make me do this!_

He took it in his mouth.

 

That was the first time his father sold him.

 

It happened again only a week or two later. Maybe the first man had spread the word. Maybe his father had put out subtle feelers. Maybe the Dark Lord had plundered Lucius’ mind, learned of Draco’s potential as a lure, and ordered him to use his son this way. Whatever the reason, Draco found himself on his knees in front of another Ministry official, opening his flies, stroking his cock to life, then swallowing it with pretended eagerness.

The next one made him sit naked astride his fleshy lap and call him Daddy. The next was one of Father’s Death Eater cronies who admitted that he’d always wanted to grease Draco’s pretty white arse. Why Lucius agreed to that one, Draco couldn’t begin to fathom. It wasn’t as if the brute had anything he or the Dark Lord needed. But pointless or not, he had no choice but to obey. Then Gregory Goyle’s father asked for a turn, and Draco had to hide his face in his arms to conceal the horrified tears in his eyes as his friend’s father took him on the plush Turkish carpet in Lucius’ study. That particular time he was grateful not to have to suck the man’s cock, certain that he couldn’t bear to show his face or play the willing trollop for his friend’s father—even a father as stupid and brutish as Mr. Goyle.

How Lucius kept it from his mother, Draco couldn’t guess. How much he had to pay the healer who stopped the bleeding after Goyle was done, he didn’t want to know. How long this could possibly go on, before someone found out and put a halt to it or Lucius ran out of paying customers, he didn’t dare consider. Most of the time, he didn’t even dare think about how it felt to be prostituted by his own father.

When he wasn’t sitting with his parents, playing the dutiful child, or taking a cock up the arse from one of his father’s political allies, Draco lay on his bed and pretended not to exist. Somewhere deep down inside where he didn’t have to look at it, he was humiliated and angry and wild to escape. The little voice in his head that had cried out so desperately in the greenhouse was rarely silent. But all that showed on his face was a kind of bafflement, much like what he’d felt when he looked in the mirror and tried to see himself as his father did.

He grew thinner. Shadows crept in under his eyes and cheekbones. His hair turned shaggy and chronically messy as he neglected to trim or comb it. His eyes took on a certain dulness and refused to meet the gazes turned on him. His voice grew quieter and quieter, until he almost never spoke, and when he did, no one heard. He wondered, privately, if he was being gradually erased by his own magical power in answer to his secret, fervent wish.

By September the First, the beautiful and elegant Draco Malfoy had been reduced to a pale shadow of himself, but somehow, no one close to him seemed to have noticed. As he came down the stairs into the foyer, his Hogwarts trunk floating along behind, his mother met him with a gracious smile and a peck on the cheek. Then she ran a hand over his hair, ruffling it where it kicked up over his collar, and said, “You should have asked the house-elves for a trim.”

Apparently, this was all she had to say about his appearance. He looked at her with his deadened eyes and replied, “I thought I’d grow it out a bit. Like Father’s.”

Narcissa smiled again and placed an elegant hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go. We don’t want you to miss the train.”

He obediently turned and walked out the door, while deep, deep down inside, the little voice was crying, _You’re leaving! It’s over! You’re FREE!_

* * *

The trip to Hogwarts passed as it had every previous year. Hours of mind-numbing conversation with his idiot friends. Sniping and snarling at chance-met rivals. Too many sweets purchased from the Trolley Witch. A run to the bathroom, flanked by Crabbe and Goyle. Business as usual.

On the way back from the loo, he squeezed his way past a group of Gryffindors in the corridor, bumping the shoulder of the nearest boy on his way.

“Watch where you’re going, Ferret,” the Gryffindor snarled, without bothering to look properly at the Slytherin.

“Shove it up your arse, Scar-Face,” Draco retorted with equal disdain.

A hand fumbled for his, pressing a scrap of parchment into his palm. His pulse jumped and his belly clenched with an excitement that never reached his cold, sneering face. Shoving both fists into his trouser pockets, he sloped off down the corridor without a backward glance.

Back in his own carriage, surrounded by Slytherins, he resisted the urge to pull the scrap of parchment from his pocket, but warmth seemed to spread from it, rising through his fingers and arm to suffuse his entire body. The promise of it made him feel more solid and alive than he had in months. And still the little voice inside him cried, louder and louder with every mile that passed, _It’s over! You’re free!_

It wasn’t until they pulled into Hogsmeade Station and all his friends crowded out of the compartment that Draco finally had a moment to look at the note. He hung back, pretending to fumble with the fastenings of his bag, waiting for Pansy to brush past him with a come-hither pout thrown over her shoulder. Waving her off, he turned his back on the corridor and pulled out the bit of parchment.

_Our room, after the feast,_ was all it said, but that was enough. More than enough. Heat and delight erupted in his belly, driving out the cold, the fear, the despair that had gripped him for so many miserable weeks. His head now up and his eyes shining in anticipation, he tucked the note away, swung his bag to his shoulder, and almost flew off the train. All he had to do was to survive the feast.

It ended at last. The new students were sorted, the food eaten, the speeches made, the faculty changes announced. Draco didn’t even bother to wonder or whisper over the fact that Professor Snape was now teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts. What would have mattered intensely to him just a short year ago was now a curiosity, no more. And the arrival of Professor Slughorn earned no more than a raised eyebrow and a half smile from him.

Finally they all rose and climbed over the benches, trailing toward the doors that let onto the entrance hall. Again, Draco hung back. Again, his friends barely registered his absence. Weasley caught sight of him, as he ducked behind the broad back of a Hufflepuff Beater to avoid his housemates, but he only raised an eyebrow and threw an arm around Granger’s shoulders. Draco gave both Gryffindors a neutral nod and edged past them, headed for the main stairway. Then he was clear of the crowd and away.

His feet barely touched the marble floors as he tore up the stairs and sped down long, echoing, empty hallways. He was panting, as much with eagerness as exertion, when he saw the round bulk of a tower ahead, a small door set in the curved wall. He lengthened his stride until he was running full tilt. Then, without warning, another figure appeared just in front of the door. Joy flooded him. He gave a shout of relief and threw himself bodily into the other boy’s arms.

“ _Harry!_ ”

“Dragon!” Harry laughed, catching him and staggering back against the wall under his weight.

Their lips met in a furious, passionate, consuming kiss that instantly turned Draco’s brain to molten soup. Harry—taller than Draco by a few inches and broader through the shoulders—swept him off his feet in his delight and fired a wordless spell at the door behind him. It flew open. The two boys tumbled through it, onto the bed that filled the entire space, then scooted away from the door so Harry could spell it closed again.

Alone and together at last, with a solid door between them and the rest of the Wizarding world, they covered each other’s faces with mad kisses, laughing and gasping, clutching at hair and clothing, rolling about in wild, delirious abandon. Finally, Harry managed to pin Draco on his back in the middle of the mattress, using his superior weight to keep him still. Draco lay beneath him, no longer fighting his hold, and grinned at the feel of their bodies pressed so perfectly together. Harry pushed himself up on his elbows. A matching grin split his face as he gazed down at Draco, and his green eyes shone with happiness behind his crooked glasses.

“So, you got my note,” he said, pointlessly.

“Git,” Draco retorted.

Harry’s grin widened. “I missed you, too.”

With that, he stooped to claim Draco’s mouth again, and the Slytherin forgot all the teasing barbs poised on the tip of his tongue. In a matter of moments, he was sprawled naked on his back, thighs spread wide to welcome his lover’s body, ankles locked together against his spine, straining to hold his pumping cock and moaning his encouragement as the other boy thrust into him. He held nothing back. He never could with Potter. One touch and his walls crumbled, leaving him utterly exposed and defenseless, with nothing between him and madness but the boy who owned his heart and his reason.

He loved Harry Potter. He needed him. He wanted him with a ferocity that was totally alien to his guarded nature. He knew that Harry was dangerous, a force of nature that he could never hope to control, but he couldn’t refuse him any more than he could refuse to breathe.

“Oh, gnngh… gods, Harry!” he sobbed, as the other boy reared up and pressed into him, pushing him to the brink of climax. His back arched and his hips twisted, pulling against the hard cock he rode. “ _It hurts!_ ”

Harry drew back and thrust again, his eyes fixed on Draco’s face, and Draco felt his gaze like another touch. Hot fingers that stroked his flesh and made him cry out again, more desperately. “ _Fuck! Harry!_ ”

“Let go,” Harry urged, his own face flushed and his voice rough. “Let it come.”

Ever obedient, Draco let it come. It hit him like an Unforgivable Curse, ripping through his body, leaving him gasping and sobbing, unstrung by the power of his release. Harry followed him only a heartbeat later, driving deep into Draco’s body and uttering a tearing groan as he came. Then they both collapsed in a nerveless, shuddering heap on the mattress and let the aftershocks grip them.

“Bloody fucking hell,” Harry groaned into the other boy’s ear, “I missed you, Malfoy!”

“I missed you,” Draco whispered. He reached up to smooth the unkempt mop of hair away from his lover’s forehead and fastened his fingers in it. He didn’t even notice the lightning bolt scar marking his skin. All he saw was the sated lust and adoration in his glowing, green eyes. “You have no idea how much.”

* * *

Dazed as he was by sex and euphoria, it took Harry longer than it normally would to realize that something was up with Malfoy. The two boys sprawled on the bed, naked, their shoulders propped against the headboard, while they ate through the remains of the sweets he had bought on the train that day. And for a long, quiet time, Harry didn’t think beyond the simple fact that he had his Slytherin love close beside him again.

They were safe in their little room. No one would come looking for them or would have a clue where to start, if they tried. This broom closet—enlarged by one of Hermione’s best Extension charms and wrapped in every spell the Gryffindor Brain Trust could find for muting, concealment and protection—was their haven. It gave them a place to meet where no hostile magic could reach them and no hint of what they meant to each other could leak out. When he was here, Harry was free to simply love Draco, enjoy him, soothe him, do all the things he longed to do every moment of every day but was denied when the rest of Hogwarts was watching.

Harry sucked on the feathery end of a sugar quill, letting it turn his lips pink and sticky. Lazy with expended lust, he let his eyes drift over to Draco and watched as the Slytherin disemboweled a custard cream. He bit off one end, sucked out most of the center, then scooped the last traces of custard from the chocolate shell with his mobile tongue.

It was incredibly erotic, and if Harry hadn’t just fucked Malfoy into babbling idiocy not fifteen minutes ago, it would have him ragingly hard. Just watching his mouth was enough to drive Harry mad with lust, especially when Malfoy began to lick the melted chocolate off of one fingertip.

_Merlin’s Balls_ , that was hot!

Against all reason, Harry felt his cock stir. Then his eyes slid from Malfoy’s soft, chocolate-smeared lips to his face, and an entirely different feeling gripped him.

Harry abruptly straightened up. “Malfoy?”

“Hmm.”

“Are you all right?”

Grey eyes turned on Harry—the same eyes that had laughed up at him and burned with passion when he touched him, but now they were wary. One silver-white brow soared nearly to his hairline. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You look… tired.”

This might have been the understatement of the century, Harry reflected, as he stared at his lover. Draco had deep purple shadows below his eyes and frown lines cut between his brows. His cheekbones seemed to press too hard against the inside of his skin, as did his ribs, which Harry fancied he could count without touching him. And that beautiful, smooth, porcelain skin that he so loved to touch had gone faintly yellow, like spoiled milk. Draco didn’t just look tired. He looked as if he hadn’t eaten or slept properly in weeks.

At Harry’s searching look, something suspiciously like a blush darkened the Slytherin’s cheeks, but the unusual color didn’t make him look any healthier. He hitched an uncomfortable shoulder and stuck his thumb in his mouth to lick the chocolate from it.

“Draco?”

The thumb clean, he switched to another finger, his eyes fixed to his bare toes and avoiding Harry’s earnest gaze.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

Still Draco said nothing, while Harry waited, counting out the seconds till he had to admit defeat. Harry’s instinctive approach to any problem was a frontal assault—fling himself at it and risk be damned—but with Draco Malfoy, that was a Forlorn Hope at best. It rarely worked, and only when he took the other boy so completely by surprise that he didn’t have time to get his defenses up. When it failed, as it nearly always did, repeated attacks only drove him farther back behind his walls.

Surprise had made Harry reckless this time. Instead of circling his prey, feeling out his mood and probing for weaknesses, looking for the chink in the other boy’s armor, he had blurted out his question without thinking and almost certainly lost his chance. He’d give it another ten seconds, then withdraw and regroup… Five seconds… Two…

“I haven’t slept.”

Draco’s low voice made Harry start. “Why not?”

“I can’t.”

Harry swallowed. “Dreams?” he asked, softly.

Draco shook his head, his eyes still on his toes, which curled as if they were trying to withdraw into his feet. “I just can’t. Can’t… let my guard down.”

“Draco, what’s going on?” He could hear the first whispers of fear in his voice, and he knew from the way the Slytherin flinched that he did, too.

“My father is using me.” Draco swallowed painfully, then amended, “Selling me.”

“What do you mean? Selling you _how?_ ”

“My body.”

“Draco…”

“My father is selling my body for political favors.”

For a single, startled moment, Harry didn’t believe him. He almost smiled, and his voice trembled with the beginnings of laughter. “You’re winding me up… taking the Mickey…”

Then Draco lifted his eyes and Harry looked straight into them for the first time. The air rushed out of his lungs. His innards clenched. He almost couldn’t summon enough oxygen to say, “You’re serious.”

Draco just looked at him, unblinking and unflinching.

Harry had one more split second to register the fear lurking in those shadowed eyes, before rage erupted in him and he lost all grip on himself. He didn’t know that he was up on his knees, grabbing Draco by the shoulders, holding him tightly enough to bruise and shaking him as he poured a torrent of words over him. He didn’t know that Draco was struggling to pull away, cowering under the onslaught of his unleashed, uncontrolled power. He didn’t know that his magic was howling through the room, ricocheting off the walls, sending chunks of stone and twisted candle sconces flying, setting the bedclothes alight.

He only knew one thing. That Lucius Fucking Malfoy—the most foul, contemptible, disgusting, unforgivable excuse for a human being who had ever drawn breath—was hurting his dragon and that Harry was going to _kill him for it!_

“ _Harry! Harry, stop!!_ ”

The shouts finally penetrated the screams of fury in his head and brought him back to a sense of his surroundings.

“ _Harry!_ ”

He blinked his eyes back into focus and saw Draco caught between his hands, desperately trying to wrench himself free, while flames licked across the quilt toward their naked bodies.

“My wand!” Draco cried, twisting toward the pillow and the wand under it. “Let me get my wand! Harry, _please!_ ”

“Bloody hell!” Harry gasped, snatching his hands away.

Draco dived for the pillow and grabbed his wand. Scrambling around to located the worst patch of flame, he pointed the wand at it and cried, “ _Aguamenti!_ ”

Water shot from the tip of wand to soak the bed. The flames flickered out, and Draco swung his wand to point at another hotspot. Harry watched, too stunned by his own actions to move, until he saw Draco crawl to one side to avoid an encroaching tongue of flame. Then he snatched up his wand and went to work on the fire.

Between the two of them, they had all the flames out in less than a minute. They knelt on the bed in the smothering darkness, listening to each other pant for breath, smelling smoke, burnt cotton and the rich residue of magic in the air. A fresh tongue of flame leapt up to Harry’s left, and Draco fired a jet of water at it. It went out.

Draco’s voice came out of the darkness, small and disbelieving. “What was that?”

“I… lost my temper, I guess.”

Harry blinked to adjust his vision and saw dim moonlight filtering through the curtains shrouding the narrow window. It was just enough to reveal Draco, pale and insubstantial as a ghost, hovering a few feet away from him. His face was no more than a white smudge when it turned on Harry.

“It’s my fault. I should’ve told you before we…”

Harry felt a fresh spark of anger shoot through him, threatening to break free, and he snapped, “You should have told me the minute it started!”

Draco said nothing, while Harry tried to breathe through his rage. He could now see that two of the sconces were still attached to the wall, with candles in them. He flicked an _Incendio_ at them, filling the room with candlelight again.

Turning dark, wounded eyes on the Slytherin, Harry said, severely, “You should have sent an owl or jumped in the floo and come to me.”

Draco flinched away from his gaze. “Right. With my father on my heels. What would that have done to all Dumbledore’s fancy protection charms? Dragging one of Voldemort’s minions into your living room?”

“You still should have told me. I’d never have let him get away with it.”

Draco continued to stare off to one side, his jaw rigid with strain and his lips pulled tight in a grimace of pain. Harry gazed sadly at him, seeing the marks of his own hands rising as bruises on his pale arms.

“Dragon.”

The other boy did not soften or turn to acknowledge him.

“Please. I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you. It’s…” He gritted his teeth, forcing the words out. “Your father. That _bastard_. I can’t believe he did this, and you didn’t come to me for _help!_ ”

“I didn’t come to you, because you can’t help.” He finally lifted his eyes to meet Harry’s, making the loyal Gryffindor wince at what he saw in them. “No one can. Don’t you get it, Harry? There’s no way out of this.”

“There has to be. If I can’t find it, Dumbledore can. Or Snape. _Someone._ ”

Draco sighed and let his gaze drop to his hands, where they lay twisted together in his lap. His shoulders drooped ever so slightly—the closest Harry had ever seen him get to abandoning his Malfoy Poise and Posture.

“I can’t ask them for help. I can’t disobey my father or put my family in danger. They’ve chosen Voldemort…”

“ _You_ haven’t!”

“They have,” Draco repeated dully, “and that means I have. Or I have to pretend, anyway.”

“Not like this! Not to point where you let your bloody father _prostitute you!_ ”

Once again, Draco’s deadened eyes lifted to Harry’s face. Once again, the Gryffindor wanted to howl and tear his hair when he saw the agony in them. “It’s better than the alternative.”

The breath caught in Harry’s throat. He stiffened. “What alternative?”

“Taking the Dark Mark and joining his army.”

“Bloody hell,” Harry gasped. He shook his head sharply to drive out the image of Draco— _his_ Draco—kneeling in front of Voldemort with his hand outstretched, a hideous black image burned into his skin. “There has to be another choice!”

“Maybe, but not for me. It’s too late for me.”

“Oh, Dragon,” Harry murmured, reaching for him. He slipped an arm around Draco’s shoulders and pulled him into a loose, undemanding embrace. Draco resisted him for a bare moment, then gave in and bent to rest his forehead in the hollow of Harry’s shoulder. Harry could feel him shaking.

Draco lay against him without moving for a minute or more. Harry didn’t know what to say and didn’t want to break the fragile peace, so he simply held his love with one arm and stroked his hair with the other hand, waiting. The shaking in the Slytherin’s limbs grew stronger.

“The bed is wet,” Draco said.

Harry gave a soggy laugh. “I’ll dry it.”

Pressing a kiss to Draco’s forehead, he urged the other boy to straighten up, then he cast a drought charm with his wand. Draco followed suit. A cloud of steam rose above the bed, as some of the water evaporated, but when Harry pressed a hand to the blankets, they were still wet.

“We’re not very good at this,” Draco pointed out.

“No.” Harry looked around at the wet, singed, disreputable bedding and laughed. “I guess it’s easier to soak things than to dry them. Oh, well, no worries. Dobby will fix them for us.”

Draco’s head came up sharply. “What?”

“I’ll just call him…”

“You will _not!_ ”

“Would you rather sleep on wet sheets? Or go back to the Slytherin dungeon?” Harry countered.

“I’d rather not be caught stark naked in Harry Potter’s bed by my family’s former servant, thank you very much!”

“Oh.” Harry paused, considering this. “Well. I suppose you have a point. Get under the covers and he won’t know it’s you.”

“They’re wet.”

“They won’t be for long, if you stop whinging and get _in_.”

With a shudder and a roll of his eyes, Draco crawled to the head of the bed and burrowed under the sodden covers. Harry waited until he was no more than a faintly shivering lump beneath the blackened quilt, then he pulled on his robe to cover his own nakedness and called, “Dobby?”

There was a loud crack, and Dobby the house-elf appeared in the middle of the mattress.

“Harry Potter!” Flinging his arms around Harry, he cried, “Harry Potter, you is here!”

“Yes, Dobby.” Harry returned his hug, then gently detached him and pushed him back. “I’m back for the new term.”

“Dobby is happy to be seeing Harry Potter again!”

“Thank you. I’m sorry for getting you up so late, but…”

“Oh, no, Harry Potter must never apologize. Harry Potter is needing Dobby, so Dobby comes. You is needing Dobby, is you not?”

“Well, yes.” Harry grinned in embarrassment and waved an arm around him at the wreckage of the bed. “I had a little accident with a candle. Now the bed is all scorched and wet. Can you fix it for me?”

“Of course Dobby can fix it.” The elf smiled and gave a snap of his fingers. Instantly, the mattress was smooth and clean, the pillows plumped and the bedding fresh. With another twinkling smile and another snap of his fingers, he sent a puff of comforting heat up from the quilt. “Dobby wants Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy to be comfortable.”

The lump in the bed gave a start. Harry’s jaw sagged open.

“Draco’s not… I mean, why would you…” Harry floundered. “What did you say?”

“Dobby knows that Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy are friends. All the house-elves of Hogwarts know.”

The covers heaved, and Draco’s rumpled head appeared. He clutched the quilt up under his nose and stared at Dobby over it. The house-elf gave him a look that was far more cautious and measuring than the one he reserved for Harry, but that had no malice in it.

Draco blinked at him, then pulled the quilt down a little to free his mouth. “Please don’t tell my father, Dobby.”

Dobby’s expression hardened and his bat-ears flattened. “Dobby does not speak to Lucius Malfoy. Lucius Malfoy is bad. Evil. Lucius Malfoy tries to hurt Harry Potter.”

“Yes, all right, Dobby,” Harry soothed. “I know you won’t tell our secret to Mr. Malfoy. But it is very important that no one knows Draco and I are friends—except the house-elves, of course. We know we can trust _them_.”

“Harry Potter _can_ trust the house-elves of Hogwarts. Even those that are not free elves. They serve Dumbledore, and they revere Harry Potter.” His enormous green eyes turned on Harry, and they held just a hint of reproach in their depths. “If Harry Potter wants to protect Draco Malfoy, then the house-elves want to protect Draco Malfoy, even if Dobby remembers bad things about the son of his old master. If Harry Potter says that his friendship with Draco Malfoy is a secret, then the house-elves will keep this secret, even if Dobby thinks it is dangerous and will bring trouble to Harry Potter. Dobby will _always_ do as Harry Potter asks.”

“Thank you, Dobby.”

“Yes,” Draco said, quietly, “thank you.”

Dobby bobbed his head in something that was not quite a bow and disappeared with a crack.

Harry stared at the spot where his house-elf friend had been a moment before, his face bemused. “Blimey,” he finally said.

Draco’s wide eyes fixed on him over the top of the quilt. “Are we worried?”

Harry swallowed, looked around helplessly, then shrugged and tried to smile. “I don’t think so. I trust Dobby.”

“And the rest of them?”

“Well, they must’ve known for a while and they haven’t said anything.”

“That’s true.” Draco pondered this new information for a long minute, his eyes guarded and the rest of his expression well-hidden behind the quilt—not that Harry would have been able to read it anyway—then he ventured, “It’ll take some getting used to, trusting house-elves.”

Harry grinned as he stripped off his robe and crawled beneath the covers. “Dobby’s a good one to start with. He’s a free elf, so he doesn’t owe obedience to anyone.”

“Except you.”

“That’s not obedience. That’s friendship.”

Draco was waiting for him in the warmth of the bed. He was still shivering, from nerves if not from cold, and he came eagerly into Harry’s arms. Curled close to his Gryffindor lover’s taller body, he closed his eyes in relief.

Harry held him tightly, savoring his closeness, and asked, “Do you want the candles out?”

Draco hesitated, a kind of coiled wariness in his body that wasn’t quite fear, thenmurmured, “Okay.”

“We can leave them lit. I don’t mind.”

“No. The dark will help.”

“With what?”

Draco didn’t answer, so Harry reached for his wand. One flick, and they were plunged into near-darkness once again. He tucked the wand back under his pillow, gathered Draco a little closer in his arms, and closed his eyes.

He was relaxing, drifting toward sleep, when a quiet voice came to him out of the darkness. “I’m sorry, Harry.”

His eyes snapped open to frown at the invisible ceiling. Draco was apologizing. Draco? _Apologizing?_ Fuck. This was not good.

“For what?”

“Letting you shag me without telling you.”

Harry gave a snort of laughter, ruffling the pale hair tickling his chin. “Don’t be daft. I don’t care about that.”

“I should’ve told you.”

“Do you think I wouldn’t have shagged you, if I’d known? Shall I shag you again, right this minute, and prove you wrong?”

“Do you really want to?”

Another soft, snorting laugh rose in his throat. He grabbed Draco’s hand and guided it down to his crotch, where his cock was already stirring. “Can you doubt me?”

Draco withdrew his hand, tucking it under his chin. “You wouldn’t, if you knew.”

“Knew what? Tell me.”

“I can’t.”

“Dragon.” Harry clasped his head and urged it up, searching for the gleam of moonlight in winter-grey eyes. “Don’t do this. Don’t lie there worrying all night, when you know you can tell me anything.”

“Not this.”

“Yes, this. _Anything._ We’ll both sleep better, if you do.”

“You’re such a sodding Gryffindor.”

Harry knew he was supposed to respond to that with a chuckle or an answering dig, but he couldn’t manage it. He was too unnerved by the echo of pain in Draco’s voice. “And you’re scaring me.”

“Harry, you…” His eyes, barely visible in the shadows, shone at Harry with something suspiciously like tears in them. “You won’t like it.”

“I’d got that far on my own. Just get it over with quick, like tearing off a band-aid.”

“A what?”

“Never mind. It’s a Muggle thing. Tell me what’s got you so spooked, Dragon.”

The Slytherin stared at him for another long moment, then swallowed painfully and began to speak. His voice was low and soft, little more than a whisper, but Harry could hear every word with shattering clarity.

“You think my father forced me, but it wasn’t like that. He didn’t. None of them did. I hated every second of it, but I did it of my own free will.”

“Why?” The question was no more than a breath on the chill air, fraught with hurt and disbelief.

“I was afraid. I don’t know how to stand up to my father, I never have, and now he has the Dark Lord behind him… I thought, if I refused, the punishment would be much worse…”

“Worse than rape?”

“It wasn’t rape. I told you, I didn’t fight it. I didn’t even say no. That means, I consented.”

“It doesn’t!” Harry pushed himself upright, forcing Draco to sit up with him, and caught his head between his hands. “There are all kinds of ways to hurt another person, to force them to do things they would never do by their own choice. Listen to me, Draco. _Listen to me!_ ” He gave the other boy a little shake and threw all his persuasive power into his voice. “Your father didn’t ask you if you wanted him to sell your body, he just _did it._ You went along with it, because you were _afraid._ That’s rape, in my book!”

Draco shook his head, pulling free of Harry’s hands in the process. “You don’t understand. I did everything. I sucked them and kissed them and let them put their fingers in me. I got hard. Sometimes I came. I didn’t want to, but my body just… reacted. And when it got really bad…” He broke off, his eyes skating away.

Harry reached up to stroke his cheek with infinite gentleness. “What?”

Tears began to slip between his lashes, painting streaks of moonlight on his cheeks. “I closed my eyes and pretended it was you.”

“Oh, Dragon,” Harry breathed. He leaned in to brush a kiss to Draco’s lips, but the other boy pulled sharply away.

“No. I can’t!”

“Can’t what?” He slipped both arms around Draco’s shoulders and drew him close. “Kiss me? That’s mental.”

“You don’t know where my lips have been,” Draco snapped, his voice a furious lash against his lover’s unprotected flesh.

Harry ignored the harshness of his words and moved again to kiss him. “Yes, I do, and I want them. Want you.”

This time, Draco could not resist him. He sank into the offered kiss, groaning with pleasure when Harry’s tongue slid into his mouth. He was breathing hard, his cock rising stiffly from between his thighs, by the time Harry pulled away again.

The Gryffindor nibbled along his jaw to his ear, fingers tracing lines of heat down his bare back, and murmured, “Let me show you how much I want you.”

“No. Please,” Draco moaned.

Harry instantly sat back and fixed him with fierce, burning eyes. “You want me to stop? I will, Dragon. I would never force you. But if it’s only because you’re afraid for me…”

Draco was crying again, the tears coursing down his cheeks and pooling in the corners of his mouth before they dripped off his chin. He swallowed, fighting for control, and whispered, “I can’t do this to you.”

“You’re not doing anything. I am, and I _want_ to do it! I want to give you something just for you. Something to remind you how much I love you.”

“Harry…”

“No, shh. No more about what your father did, or those men, or how you let it happen. You’re here with me, now, where you belong, and I won’t let them ruin us. I won’t let them hurt you anymore.”

“Bloody hell!” Draco sobbed, twisting his head away and pressing the heel of his hand to one eye. “ _Harry!_ ”

“I’m right here.” Harry gathered the other boy up in his arms again, bearing him back onto the mattress and settling his head into a pillow. “I’m always here.”

He stroked his hands down Draco’s chest to his belly, then to his loins, finding and clasping his painfully hard cock. One hand worked it slowly, expertly, while the other moved between his thighs. Draco instinctively opened to him, lifting and spreading his knee, then uttering a soft cry of welcome when Harry’s fingers found his most sensitive places.

“You’re in control, now,” Harry whispered, his lips moving against Draco’s as he spoke. “You choose. What do you want?”

Draco pushed him back just a little, so he could gaze into his eyes, and his fingers rested against his lower lip. Tears still leaked from between his clumped lashes, but the pain in his eyes had softened into something else. Something more enticing. He regarded Harry for a long, simmering moment. Then he whispered, “I want to come in your mouth.”

Harry grinned in unabashed delight. “Good choice.”

 

When Harry had fulfilled his dragon’s wishes and brought him to a panting, moaning climax with his mouth and hands, he crawled back up to lie on the pillow beside him and gathered him up in his arms. Draco groaned softly, low in his throat, and burrowed his face into Harry’s neck where he could smell and taste him with every breath. The flutter of his eyelashes tickled Harry’s skin, and the tug of his lips when he sucked lightly at his throat made him laugh with delight.

“Ready to sleep?” he murmured into the mop of silver-gilt hair.

“Mmm.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Harry?”

“Don’t start again…” he chided, half-seriously.

“Nngh-no. That was brilliant.”

“Have these magic lips ever let you down?”

Draco laughed—a low gurgle of sound smothered in Harry’s neck. “Never.”

“Neither will the rest of me.” He cradled Draco’s head gently and turned to press a kiss to it. “I promise you. I’ll find a way out of this for you, and when I’m done,” he swallowed and his voice roughened, “I’ll kill your fucking father.”

**_To be continued…_ **


	2. Loving Tentacles, or Letters From Home

****“He looks dreadful.”

Harry glanced up from his plate at the sound of Hermione’s voice, his brows lifted in a question.

“Malfoy,” she muttered. “He looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks. What’s wrong with him?”

Harry’s eyes cut sideways to the Slytherin table. Malfoy sat between his usual bookends, Crabbe and Goyle, eating a neatly buttered triangle of toast. His face was perfectly blank, but even from this distance, obviously unwell. With the bright light from the enchanted ceiling streaming down on him, throwing the planes of his face into high relief, the shadows in his eye sockets and beneath his cheekbones looked like bruises.

Ron’s eyes followed Harry’s and he checked his hand halfway to his mouth, a spoon loaded with porridge suspended in midair. His ginger brows snapped together in a frown. “Blimey.” He looked at Harry with something approaching concern in his eyes. “She’s right, as usual.”

Harry tried to shrug it off. He dug into his breakfast and shoved a forkful of eggs into his mouth, mumbling, “He had a rough summer.”

“Daddy the Death Eater being a prick?”

“Isn’t he always?” Harry retorted sourly.

“Seriously, Harry.” That finally brought Harry’s eyes up to Ron’s face to see him scowling. “You know I wouldn’t mind if the ferret took a midnight stroll into a nest of acromantulas, but that,” he twitched his head at the boy across the room, “is not a happy man.”

 _You have no fucking idea,_ Harry reflected, privately, but all he said to Ron was, “I know.”

“You might want to do something about it, before he does start sleepwalking in the Forbidden Forest.”

Harry quirked a humorless smile at him. “I’ll keep the door locked.”

Hermione gazed dolefully at him, a question clearly poised on her lips but held back by her sense of propriety.

“What?” he prompted.

“Nothing. It’s none of my business. Or yours, Ron,” she added, when Ron opened his mouth to speak. “But if that were my boyfriend over there, looking like he’d just been exhumed from a fresh grave, I’d get him to Madam Pomfrey before he had to be carried into the hospital wing on a stretcher.”

“I didn’t know you cared,” Harry said, trying for sardonic and only getting as far as surprised.

Hermione pursed her lips at him. “Whatever happened to Malfoy over the summer, he’s not getting over it. Honestly, Harry, don’t you see it? He’s practically wasting away in front of our eyes.”

“I see it.”

Her face twisted with worry. “When I saw him on the train at the beginning of term, thought… well, the truth is, I thought he’d finally done it. Gotten the Dark Mark. I was so relieved when…”

Harry’s brows rose nearly to his hairline. “Yes?”

Pink stained her cheeks. “When it was obvious from the way you treated him that he hadn’t.”

It was Harry’s turn to flush. “I wouldn’t blame him, if he had. It wouldn’t be his fault.”

“No, but it would change things between you. How could it not, with You-Know-Who’s mark on his arm?”

Harry slid his eyes over to Malfoy again, noting that he was pushing away his plate and rising from the table without having eaten anything but a few bites of toast. “Why are we talking about this?”

“I’m just trying to get you to _look_. You don’t have to tell us what’s going on with him. It’s really none of our business, and he wouldn’t thank you for sharing it. But he needs help, and if you don’t give it to him, no one will.”

Before Harry could come up with a response to this, Ron caught his eye and rolled his own toward the nearest Gryffindor sharing their table. It was Seamus Finnegan, with Dean Thomas and Parvati Patil close beside him, and he was clearly straining to hear their low-voiced conversation. Harry took one look at the expressions of avid curiosity on the faces of his housemates and shut his mouth with a snap. Hermione followed suit, and they all bent over their plates again.

After a few bites of scrambled eggs, Hermione spoke again, her voice determinedly casual. “We were thinking of tea at Hagrid’s this afternoon. After Herbology.”

Harry brightened at that. “Yeah. Brilliant.”

Tea at Hagrid’s meant time with Draco outside their little room—if he could catch the Slytherin alone and pass along the invitation. Hagrid was the only other person at Hogwarts who knew about Harry and Draco, and his hut was neutral ground. Supposed enemies could meet, have a cup of tea, exchange civil words, act like the not-quite-friends that they were under Hagrid’s benevolent eye. And Harry could have all the people who meant the most to him under one roof for a brief, precious time.

Draco would fuss. He would complain about Hagrid’s cooking or Ron’s table manners. He would claim that he had better things to do than hang around a gamekeeper’s hut with a gaggle of Gryffindors. But he would agree to come, or Harry would stun him, stuff him in a sack, and drag him there.

 

*** *** ***

 

Harry glanced around Greenhouse Three as he stepped inside, his eyes skimming the familiar faces and lighting on the pale, unsmiling one at the back of the group. Draco was the only Slytherin preparing for a N.E.W.T. in Herbology, so he was always alone in class, stranded, the odd man out. To Harry’s eye, he looked almost naked without the human wall of Crabbe and Goyle for cover, but it made things easier for Harry when he wanted a chance to talk.

Professor Sprout was dividing the class into groups, positioning them around pots that contained juvenile Devil’s Snare. Harry abandoned his friends without a qualm and drifted toward Draco’s isolated corner of the greenhouse, getting himself into position. Sure enough, when only one pot was left untended, Sprout waved Harry, Draco and Neville toward it without hesitation.

“All right, then, you know what to do!” she called, cheerfully. “They’re only babies, so don’t be afraid, but watch out for those vines!”

Harry grinned, pulled on his gloves, and settled in for an enjoyable afternoon of wrestling with temperamental carnivorous plants.

Their specimen seemed particularly fond of Draco.It continually sent out tendrils to wind around him, trying to draw him into its embrace. Harry and Neville spent more time freeing Draco from the Devil’s Snare’s affectionate clutches than pruning and feeding it, but it provided a handy distraction for Harry. When Neville was down on his knees, poking at a tendril that had wrapped itself several times around Draco’s legs, and Harry was holding the Slytherin up so he wouldn’t pitch headfirst into the pot, he managed to lean close and mutter in his ear.

“Hagrid’s, after class.”

Draco nodded fractionally, without shifting his gaze from Neville’s bent head. A moment later, the tendril unravelled and Draco stepped free of its grasp. As Neville scrambled to his feet and dusted off the front of his robes, Draco threw him a supercilious smirk and drawled, “It’s nice to know you’re good for _something_ , Longbottom. If it were up to Potter, I’d be fertilizer by now.”

Neville cast him a nervous look, his eyes dropping to where, unnoticed by either of them, Harry’s hand still rested at the small of Draco’s back. It was an innocent but intimate gesture, and Neville’s eyes widened at the sight. All three seemed to realize what was happening at the same instant. Harry dropped his hand and cleared his throat. Draco took a step to one side, putting some distance between him and the Gryffindors. Neville flushed a terrifying shade of crimson and hunched over the plant once more.

Harry was trying to figure out how to move past the awkwardness that hung so palpably around them, when Draco blurted out, “Bloody hell! What’s wrong with this sodding plant?!”

Harry and Neville both looked at him, startled, and saw yet another Devil’s Snare tendril wrapped around his leg from calf to mid-thigh.

“It likes you, Malfoy,” Neville ventured, with a hint of laughter in his voice, his cheeks still an unnatural shade of red. “The juveniles are like that. They get attached.”

Draco rolled his eyes and huffed, earning a sardonic crack of laughter from Harry. Pitching his voice so most of the greenhouse could hear, the Gryffindor snarked, “Typical, Malfoy. The only living creature in Hogwarts that wants to get within wand’s reach of you is a flesh-eating toddler.”

Draco shot a sharp, speaking look at Neville. “Just get the ruddy thing off me, Longbottom. Obviously Potter hasn’t got a clue what to do.”

“Oh, I know how to get it off,” Harry retorted, “I’m just not sure I want to. Maybe I’ll do us all a favor and let it eat you.”

The plant began reeling in its tendril, dragging Malfoy closer. He braced his foot against the heavy pot and leaned away, but the Devil’s Snare knew that trick and already had another tendril sneaking up his side to wrap around his arm. None of the boys noticed this, until it gave a tug and Draco overbalanced. He pitched forward with a startled cry that turned to a curse, as Harry snapped an arm around his waist, catching him just in time.

“What’s this, now?” Professor Sprout cried, hurrying toward them with her wand in her hand. “Careless, Malfoy, very careless! You can’t take your eyes off a Devil’s Snare!”

“It fancies him, Professor!” Harry said, trying not to laugh as he held Draco draped over his arm, leaning all his weight back against the pull of the plant, and Draco swore yet more vividly. “It keeps grabbing him.”

Neville was poking at the tendrils with his wand, but he seemed so distracted by Draco’s imminent death by plant strangulation that he’d forgotten all his spells.

Professor Sprout quickly dealt with the tendril on Malfoy’s arm, jabbing her wand at it while a stream of murky green-brown sparks shot from the tip. The vine loosened and reeled itself back into the pot. “Yes, these are just children, really. They can get very attached.”

“That’s what Neville said.” Harry was now snorting with laughter. This earned him a foul glare from Malfoy, but it really was too rich—a deadly, carnivorous plant taking Draco for its mother.

“It’s not funny, Potter.”

“On the contrary. It’s bloody hilarious.”

Neville had finally detached the vine from Draco’s leg, and the Slytherin stepped hastily away from the pot. He was about to favor Harry with another withering retort, when Professor Sprout caught his left arm by the elbow and pulled it close to examine it.

“Dearie me. I was afraid of that…”

“Of what?” Draco demanded.

“It got a little overexcited.”

She delicately peeled back Draco’s sleeve, exposing a livid weal that twined from the back of his hand up to the inside of his elbow. All three of the boys could now see that the fabric of his sleeve had a twisting, vine-shaped hole burned through it.

“Ack!”

“No reason to panic, Malfoy,” Professor Sprout informed him briskly. “But you’d better get up to Madam Pomfrey for a salve to counteract the venom.”

“ _Venom?_ You never told us these things were venomous!”

“Only the young ones, and only when they’re overstimulated.” Her eyes twinkled at him with more than a hint of malicious enjoyment in them. It seemed that even the ever-cheerful, unfailingly kind Head of Hufflepuff couldn’t resist the chance to goad a Slytherin once in a while. “As soon as they get strong enough to trap and hold their prey, they drop the venom sacks. Off you go, now. Tell her it’s from a juvenile Devil’s Snare, no more than six weeks old, and she’ll know just what to do. The rest of you, get on with your work!”

Draco threw an evil look at her broad back, as she bustled to the other end of the greenhouse.

“I’ll overstimulate her bloody brat of a plant,” he groused, chucking his wand into his bag and slinging it over his shoulder.

Harry caught his eye as he turned for the door and raised his brows in a silent question. Malfoy twitched his head in a sort of nod, telling Harry that he was fine and he’d meet him at Hagrid’s, as planned, then he slipped past the two Gryffindors, out of the greenhouse.

When Malfoy was gone and Professor Sprout back among her Hufflepuffs, out of earshot, Harry dropped to a crouch next to Neville and bent over the book he had open on the ground. He pretended to read the instructions for determining which tendrils in a juvenile Devil’s Snare were overgrown and needed pruning. In reality, he wanted to talk to Neville without drawing the attention of his classmates.

“What you saw before…” he muttered. Neville’s head snapped up. He fixed wide, disbelieving eyes on Harry, and his cheeks heated again. “You’ll keep it to yourself?”

The other boy gulped and nodded.

“Thanks. It’s important no one knows.”

Neville ducked his head to stare at the book for a long moment, fingering his wand, then he whispered, “Why?”

“Why, what? Why Malfoy?”

The flush deepened, creeping around to the back of his neck. “Why keep it a secret?”

Now it was Harry’s turn to stare in disbelief. “Seriously?”

Neville shrugged and risked a glance at Harry. “If you really… you know… care about him, why not just say so?”

Harry’s brows flew up to his hairline. “Because if his father found out, he’d kill him. Not to mention what the rest of the Slytherins would do to him.”

The truth of that visibly sank into Neville’s brain. “Oh. Right.”

“Then there’s the rest of Wizarding Britain. D’you remember how they treated Hermione, back in Fourth Year, when they all thought we were dating and she’d cheated on me?”

“Yeah…”

“And she’s not Lucius Malfoy’s son.”

A glimmer of a smile lit Neville’s eyes. “She’s not anybody’s son.”

Harry chuckled. “You know what I mean.”

He nodded his understanding. “I won’t say anything. You can trust me, Harry.”

“I know I can. Thanks, Neville.”

“Does anyone know?”

“Just Ron and Hermione. And Hagrid.”

Neville’s eyes widened at that. “Hagrid? And he hasn’t fed Malfoy to his Blast-ended Skrewts by now?”

“You know Hagrid. He can’t hate anyone for long, even Malfoy.”

“Well, if Hagrid can forgive him…” Neville grinned shyly. “And he did say that I was good for _something_ …”

Harry laughed outright at that. “A high compliment!”

“Potter! Longbottom! I don’t see any pruning going on!” Professor Sprout called from the far end of the greenhouse.

Harry lifted his head, biting back a grin. “Sorry, Professor! We got sidetracked looking for ways to wean our baby off its Malfoy Attachment! It’s been whimpering ever since he left!”

Sprout pursed her lips and shook her head, but the laughter in her voice betrayed her lingering delight that the plant had chosen Malfoy, of all people, as its love object. “Get along with you. Only half an hour left.”

Harry tried to concentrate on his work, but he couldn’t help noticing that the rest of the class was having as much fun as Sprout was with Malfoy’s discomfiture, and they were far less subtle about it. The idea that a baby Devil’s Snare had become so enamored of Malfoy that it had tried to poison him kept them in stitches. They exchanged increasingly off-color jokes at his expense until even Professor Sprout couldn’t ignore them. When she caught one of the Ravenclaws making an obscene gesture while miming the moment when Malfoy had nearly fallen headlong into the pot, she took away twenty House points and set the boy to mucking out the rank, blood-smeared food bin. After that, the others kept their voices down and hid their crudest jokes behind lifted hands, but Harry saw it all. His temper was on a slow boil by the time class finally ended.

Slamming his belongings into his bag and muttering a farewell to Neville, he ducked past a knot of Hufflepuffs in close conversation with Sprout and out the door. Ron and Hermione followed. Once free of their classmates, they turned away from the castle, headed toward the eaves of the Forbidden Forest.

“What really happened with that ruddy plant?” Ron asked, when they were well away from the other students trailing out of the greenhouse.

“Just what Professor Sprout said. It took a shine to Malfoy.” Harry scowled at the memory of how the class had mocked Draco’s mishap with the Devil’s Snare. He’d thought it was hilarious, till he’d seen those bloody Ravenclaws making fun of his dragon. Then he just wanted to hex someone. “I’m not sure whether it thought he was its mother or its dinner, but it sure wasn’t going to let him get away.”

“What about this venom?” Ron looked to Hermione as the obvious source of arcane knowledge. “Have you heard anything about that before?”

She frowned. “There’s nothing about it in our textbook. I checked after what happened to Malfoy and only found one oblique reference to metabolic changes as the plant matures. So either they don’t bother with it because it’s not dangerous, or they assume few people bother with the juveniles. Most people use Devil’s Snare for security, and they want them full grown.”

Harry and Ron exchanged a knowing grin. “We remember.”

They had arrived at Hagrid’s door and Harry lifted his hand to knock, adding back over his shoulder, “I’m sure Malfoy is fine. Madam Pomfrey can fix a lot worse than that little burn.”

The door flew open before he could knock. Hagrid stood on the stoop, grinning happily at them through his enormous beard. “Harry! Good t’see yeh! I got the kettle on an’ a fresh plate o’ rock cakes!”

“How did you…” Harry’s eyes moved into the hut and he saw Draco sitting at the table with a tea cup the size of a tankard in front of him. He broke out in a relieved smile. “Malfoy!”

Draco’s eyes met Harry’s, as the Gryffindor returned Hagrid’s engulfing hug and squeezed past him into the hut. “Just in time. I was about to eat all the cakes.”

Harry shot a knowing look at the plate of suspicious-looking cakes in the middle of the table, then cracked a grin at the Slytherin. “Sure you were.”

He skirted the table, making for the chair to Draco’s right. He could now see a clean, white bandage wrapped around the other boy’s hand and disappearing up into his shredded sleeve. At the touch of Harry’s gaze, Draco began to pick nervously at a thread along its edge.

“You finished with Madam Pomfrey already?”

Draco pulled a grimace that, in the dim firelight, made him look shockingly gaunt and tired. “Never went.”

Hermione and Ron now sat across the table from them, having extricated themselves from Hagrid’s greeting. Hermione caught his words and frowned at him in concern. “That looked like a nasty burn. You should let Madam Pomfrey look at it.”

“Hagrid fixed it up for me.”

That clearly startled her. Wide, brown eyes moved from the bandage on Malfoy’s arm to Hagrid’s embarrassed face. “How do you know about Devil’s Snare venom, Hagrid?”

“Don’ really,” Hagrid replied, as he set the steaming teapot and a few more oversized cups on the table. “But in my line o’ work, yeh got t’be prepared for anythin’. Looked like a burn teh me, an’ I know plenty abou’ burns.”

“What did you use?”

He scratched his bristly head. “Hm… a bit o’ this, a bit o’ that…”

“Murtlap essence and a salve of Dittany with silver,” Draco answered succinctly.

Hagrid shook his head lugubriously. “Yeh’re givin’ away all my secrets, Malfoy.”

Draco gave him a sideways smile that was distinctly lacking in malice. “They’re not secrets, Hagrid, just basic healing potions.”

“Well,” his smile widened and his eyes twinkled at the Slytherin, “I never was much of a hand at potions.”

“Where do you get all your supplies, then?” He glanced over at Hermione and waved a hand toward the back of the room. “He’s got a whole cupboard full of potions. It’s fairly impressive, really.”

“Professor Snape. An’ Madam Pomfrey. They give me everything I ask for. Snape once tried teh teach me how teh brew a healing draft for Doxy bites.” He visibly drooped. “It didn’ go so well.”

Harry laughed. “I bet it didn’t.” At Hagrid’s wounded look, he wiped the smile from his face and said, soberly, “I’m sorry, Hagrid. We all know potions can be tricky.”

“Hmph!” Hagrid slapped a cup down in front of him and nudged the plate of enormous, iron-hard rock cakes in his direction.

They all settled down to enjoy their tea. Under cover of the general conversation, Harry bent close to Draco to ask, “Why didn’t you go to the hospital wing?”

The Slytherin shrugged and started picking at the edge of his bandage again. “I didn’t fancy being made to feel any more of a prat than I already do.”

Harry regarded him from beneath his lashes. “That’s not the real reason.”

The look Draco gave him was half challenging, half annoyed. “It’s the only one you’re going to get. Shut it and drink your tea, Potter.”

Harry complied, his eyes now veiled behind lowered lashes but rarely leaving Draco’s face.

Hermione was right, as per bloody usual, and Draco looked like hell. He’d been getting better since his return to Hogwarts, eating and sleeping regularly, relaxing his state of hyper-vigilance, letting the wounds to his psyche scab over, if not actually heal. Harry was sure of it. But either Harry had been fooling himself—always a possibility—or something had happened that Harry didn’t know about—also quite possible, given his general cluelessness—because Draco looked even more miserable and worn down than he had just that morning. Or maybe it was the firelight throwing heavy, disconcerting shadows across the Slytherin’s pale face.

Draco took a sip of his tea and turned to look at the boy gazing so steadily at him. Harry met his eyes squarely and saw the defensive shutters closed and locked behind their grey irises.

Nope, not the firelight. Something was most definitely up, and Draco’s refusal to venture into the hospital wing was mixed up with it. But how? And how had he not seen his dragon being slowly eaten alive in front of him?

Slipping a hand up Draco’s back to clasp his neck just above his collar, Harry let a trickle of reassurance pass through his fingers and into his love’s overstressed body. Draco felt it. His shoulders loosened slightly and he lifted his chin, tilting his head back against the support of Harry’s hand.

“Are you all right, Malfoy?” Hermione suddenly asked, breaking the intimacy of the moment and shutting off Harry’s magic with a snap.

Draco’s head came down and his jaw tightened. “Fine.”

“You don’t look it.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, but whatever snappish words rose in his throat he kept between his teeth.

“Leave off, Hermione,” Ron said, startling all of them with this unaccustomed burst of sensitivity. “He doesn’t need you getting all broody over him.” Then, reverting to form, he added with a malicious twinkle in his eye, “He’s got a Devil’s Snare for that.”

Malfoy’s lips twisted in a sneer, but he couldn’t hold it. In the next breath, he burst out laughing. “You’ve got it backward, Weasel. I’m the one who’s supposed to get broody over my plant baby.”

“I’d like to see that,” Ron assured him, grinning.

If Draco didn’t notice that the smile never quite reached Ron’s eyes, Harry did. All three of the Gryffindors were acutely aware that something was wrong with Malfoy, but Ron had reminded Hermione that it wasn’t their place to push for information and Harry knew better than to bring it up in front of the others. He would just have to wait to launch another Forlorn Hope on Malfoy’s heavily-defended walls when they were alone.

Only a few minutes after this exchange, Draco pushed back his chair and stood up. “I’d better get back. Thanks for the tea, Hagrid, and for…” He held up his bandaged arm.

“Yeh’re always welcome, Malfoy.” Hagrid’s beetle-black eyes dwelled on the boy’s pale, drawn face, and his eyebrows drew together in a frown. “I reckon Hermione’s righ’ an’ yeh should go see Madam Pomfrey abou’ that arm.”

Draco flexed and turned his hand experimentally. “It’ll be fine. It’s stopped hurting.”

“Hmmph!” Hagrid grumped.

Harry got up to follow Draco into the tiny back room of the hut. The Slytherin always left Hagrid’s by the back door, skirting the pumpkin patch and using the eaves of the Forest as cover to disguise the direction of his approach to the castle. Hidden from his friends at last, Harry pulled his lover into his arms and bent to press a kiss to the nape of his neck, where his hand had rested so comfortably a few minutes before.

“Tonight?” he murmured, when his lips were free.

“Hmm.”

“I have piles of homework, but don’t think I can concentrate. I need you naked in my arms.” His lips found the sweet spot at the back of Draco’s neck again. “I mean I _really_ need it.”

“Hmm,” Draco sighed, his arms going around Harry’s waist inside his robes. His fingers slipped suggestively into the back of Harry’s belt and teased the upper curve of his bum. “I have lots of homework, too.”

“Is that a ‘no’?”

“That’s a ‘let’s blow off work and risk flunking our NEWTs together’.”

“I like that answer.”

Harry lifted his head to find Draco’s mouth with his. They kissed long and sweetly, letting just a taste of their ever-simmering passion leak into the embrace. Just enough to soften and heat their lips, quicken their pulses, catch at their breath. When Harry felt his cock stir and begin to push against Draco’s hip, he pulled gently away.

Draco’s reddened lips tilted up in a smile. “Back to the viper’s nest.”

“Be careful.”

“Like you were with Longbottom today?” Before Harry could reply to this, he stepped back, out of Harry’s arms, and shouldered his bag. “Don’t worry about it. He’s a Gryffindor to the core and too bloody noble to out us. Just don’t take it any farther, okay? Finnegan, Thomas, the she-weasel. They don’t need to know.”

“Understood. I’ll see you later.”

“Later.”

Then Draco was gone and Harry turned back to where his friends waited.

 

*** *** ***

Draco lurched upright, his heart stuttering painfully and the air tearing at his lungs. It was full night, pitch dark and bitterly cold. In his blind panic, he didn’t think to catch the blanket before it slid down to his waist. The frigid air struck him a physical blow and raised goosebumps on his bare skin. He didn’t reach for the blanket to cover himself. Instead, he stuck the heel of his hand between his teeth to smother his sobs, instinctively trying to hide his distress, and drew his limbs up in a tight protective huddle.

His eyes had barely begun to adjust, letting him see the window outlined in dim starlight, and his brain had only just registered that he was awake, when he heard a voice murmur, sleepily, “Draco?”

He swallowed another sob and ducked his head to bury his face in his bent knees. The blankets caught around his hips moved as another body shifted beneath them. A warm hand touched his back, slid down to rest at its favorite spot just above his tailbone.

“What’s wrong?”

Swallowing the panic congealed in his throat, he lifted his head and croaked, unconvincingly, “Nothing. I’m fine.”

“Bollocks.” Harry moved in the darkness. The candles in the wall sconces flared to life, revealing their broom cupboard bedroom and Harry’s muddled, sleep-softened, worried face on the pillow beside him. “You’ve been trying to feed me that shite all day. I’m not swallowing it.”

Draco twisted his head to gaze down at the other boy. His stomach dropped into his very cold toes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Too bad.”

Instead of sitting up, Harry reached out to grab Draco’s arm and pull him back onto the mattress. Nerveless and helpless in his current state, Draco let the Gryffindor gather him up in his arms and tug the blankets up around his chin. He appreciated the warmth. He liked the feel of Harry’s arms around him, shielding him from the monsters in the dark and in his own head. But he truly and importantly _did not want to talk about it._

“So, tell me what’s going on.”

“I had a dream. That’s all.”

“That’s not why you’ve been looking like death warmed over all day. Did you dream last night, too?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.” He sighed and burrowed into the taller boy’s shoulder. It really sucked being so susceptible to the warmth and security of Potter’s arms that he lost his mind the instant they closed around him. Another minute of this and he’d be spilling his guts without a second thought. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters if you can’t sleep.”

He sighed again. “It was just a dream.”

“About the summer.”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“No.”

“You can, you know. I’ll listen and I won’t get mad. Well,” he temporized, “maybe I _will_ get mad, but not at you, and I won’t blow things up or set the bed on fire.”

“Please, Harry…”

Harry pushed himself up on an elbow to lean over Draco, gazing down at him with those big, myopic, gloriously green eyes, now so full of concern that it spilled out of them like tears. Draco couldn’t help himself. He had to touch him. He lifted a hand to rest against Potter’s cheek and pressed his thumb to the frown line at the downturned corner of his mouth as if he could erase it.

“Let it go. It’s only a dream.”

Harry’s frown deepened. “You’ve been off all day. You wouldn’t go to Madam Pomfrey with that burn…”

“I didn’t go to Madam Pomfrey because I don’t need her to tell me that I need more sleep.”

“That’s not it. Or not all of it.” His hand closed over Draco’s bandaged wrist, his clasp just light enough not to hurt. “Tell me the rest. Are you afraid she’ll see how ill you are?”

Draco winced. “She’ll start prying. Asking questions. Or maybe she won’t and,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “that would be worse.”

Harry stroked his face with loving fingers, telling Draco in that simple touch that he understood. “She will. One look at you, and she’ll know something’s wrong.”

Draco closed his eyes, blocking out the sight of Harry’s glowing eyes. “My mother didn’t.”

The hand on his face hesitated for just a moment, registering the hurt behind those words, then resumed its stroking. “Maybe she did, but she was afraid, like you.”

“You’re saying that maybe she knows what my father is doing?” The bitterness in his voice surprised even him. He hadn’t known how angry he was with his mother until that moment.

“I’m saying, maybe she knows something’s wrong, maybe she saw it in your face, but she’s afraid to ask.”

“Or maybe she didn’t, because she doesn’t _want_ to or doesn’t _give a damn_.”

“Why would you say that?”

Draco opened his eyes and fixed them on Harry’s face. He could feel his features hardening with the anger brewing inside him, turning him into the stiff, cold, inhuman Malfoy that he hated so much. “Because she’s ordered me back to the Manor for Christmas.”

Harry stiffened at that. Power flared, hot and dangerous, in his eyes. “What?”

“I got a letter in today’s Owl Post. They’re meeting me in Hogsmeade on the last day of classes to escort me home.” He watched understanding and horror dawn in Harry’s impossibly transparent face, a bleak smile tilting his own lips in response. “If she suspected that Father was hurting me and cared enough to protect me, why would she make me go back? _Why would she let him near me?!_ ”

“You can’t go,” Harry suddenly declared. He made it sound so simple and so reasonable—a fact not to be disputed—but Draco knew better.

“I have to.”

“You don’t!” He lurched upright, sitting back on his heels and dragging the blankets away from Draco’s shrinking body, while power crackled around him like static electricity, lifting the hair from his scalp. “You can stay in the castle!”

“I’m underage, Potter. If my parents summon me home, I have to go. I don’t have a choice.”

“Of course you do! Just tell Dumbledore or Snape…”

“That I don’t want to go home for Christmas because my father has a queue of dirty old men waiting to bugger me? I don’t bloody well think so!”

“Maybe not that part, but you can tell them you’re afraid of your father.”

“They won’t believe it. Not unless I give a good reason.”

“Dumbledore would believe you. He knows what your father’s like and he…”

“ _You don’t get it, Potter!_ ” His shout cut off Harry’s latest protest and brought his teeth together with a snap. Draco sat up, ignoring the cold of the room to confront him on a more equal footing. “What if it’s not my father giving the orders? What if it’s _him?_ And what will he do to my family if I refuse?!”

Harry just stared at him, dumbfounded.

Draco swallowed and went on in a quieter but no less certain tone. “Whatever they are, whatever they’re doing, they’re the only family I have. I can’t let the Dark Lord torture or kill them because of me.”

“So you’ll let them torture you, instead?”

“I’ll survive.”

“Dragon.” Harry’s hands closed around his blue-white arms. “You’re allowed to do better than that. You’re allowed to protect yourself, even from your family.”

“I’m also allowed to protect my _family_ , even if you don’t agree with it.”

The hands on his arms twitched with the barely-controlled urge to shake him. “Of course.”

“That’s what I’m doing, Harry.” He stared straight into the other boy’s eyes, willing the hero in him to rise to the occasion, to understand his need to place himself between the people he loved and danger. “I’m protecting my mother from Voldemort’s vengeance.”

For a handful of heartbeats, neither of them so much as breathed. They simply stared at each other, frozen in place, balanced on a knife blade of indecision. Then Harry sighed and time started moving again.

“I get it.”

Draco sagged in his clasp, almost overcome by his own relief. Harry gathered him close in his usual way, tucking Draco’s head into his shoulder and bending to breathe in the scent of his hair.

“You’re scared, aren’t you? That it’ll start again?” Draco shuddered. “That’s why you dreamed about them… the men…”

“Don’t,” he whispered, screwing his eyes shut against the image of hungry faces, wet lips and reaching hands.

“There has to be something I can do.” When Draco didn’t answer, Harry caught his head and tried to tilt it up. “Dragon. Come on, look at me.”

The pressure of his hands pushed Draco away from his support and lifted his head. Slowly, reluctantly, Draco raised his eyes to meet Harry’s. They were only a handspan away, green irises lit with tiny candle flames, and fierce with need—the need to save, to protect, to snatch his love from the jaws of death or the horrors of family obligation. Poor Harry couldn’t help himself. And try as he might to resist, Draco was putty in his hands. He could feel himself melting where he sat.

“I only want to help.” Harry brushed a rogue lock of hair from his eyes with infinite gentleness. “Tell me what to do.”

Draco stared at him intently, his soul bleeding from his eyes, then abruptly reached up to slide a hand behind his neck. In the next breath, his mouth was locked to Harry’s, lips parted, tongue reaching for him. Harry answered the unspoken plea and thrust his tongue forcefully into his mouth. At the same time, his hands fastened in Draco’s hair and pushed him back onto the pillow. Draco moaned softly in encouragement, back arching, when Harry’s grip on his hair tightened enough to hurt. The pain wasn’t much, just a tingle in his scalp, but it shot straight to his groin and brought his cock up so fast that his vision swam into blackness as the blood rushed from his head.

He gasped his approval, then cried out sharply when Harry wrenched his head back with the fist in his hair. A hot tongue swept up his bared, arched throat. Lips fastened on the skin beneath his jaw, sucking fiercely, then teeth scraped over the fresh bruise. Draco cried out again, thrashing to get his legs up… open… to draw his lover down and into him…

“He doesn’t get to mark you,” Harry growled in his ear, before nipping at his throat again. “He doesn’t get to own you.”

“Nnngh! Harry!” Draco gasped, unable to form any more coherent words.

“No one does… no one but me…”

Lips fastened on the tender skin of his neck again, pulling brutally, even as a knee drove up between his thighs and pushed them apart. Draco kicked his foot free of the blankets and Harry’s entangling legs, digging his heel into the mattress so he could push his body up against the other boy’s. Harry freed one hand from his hair and caught his leg, guiding it around his waist, then slipped his hand down to grasp Draco’s arse with bruising fingers. Draco flung his other leg up and locked his ankles together at the small of Harry’s back, surrendering himself without hesitation to what he sensed was coming.

Harry had never touched him like this before. The heat, the demand, the force just tipping over the edge into pain, the power threatening to break free and carry them both off to a place they’d never dared to go. It was terrifying. But it was also the hottest, most fantastic, most ecstatic thing he’d ever felt, and he desperately wanted Harry to take that last step. Let go. Let the lust and power and anger in him loose to burn the foulness from Draco’s body once and for all.

“Get them out of me,” he hissed into Harry’s ear. “ _Fuck them out of me!_ ”

Harry growled a wordless reply and drove into him in one brutal thrust. No preparation, no time to adjust, just a cock slamming into his body and ripping a full-throated howl from him. If Harry heard the real pain in his cry, he gave no sign. His grip on Draco’s hair tightened, his fingers dug into the muscle of his arse, his hips slammed into his spread thighs with bruising force, and his teeth sank into the base of his throat until blood trickled over his collarbone.

Draco exhaled a moan, but it came out as a high, keening, hungry whine that never seemed to stop. He was beyond words, beyond rational thought, pleasure building to an agonizing pitch inside him as the tidal wave of his own climax towered over him. He wouldn’t survive it. It would stop his heart… tear him in two and let his soul spill out of his broken body… bring the walls of Hogwarts down around them in a tomb grand and destructive enough to suit even a Malfoy’s world-crushing pride…

The breath choked off in his throat and his body stiffened. Harry sensed the wave breaking and halted his frantic pumping to pull Draco close in his arms, shielding him against the impact. The shift in position, the pressure of Harry’s belly against his enflamed cock, the welcome strength of his arms were more than he could bear and Draco pitched headfirst into the flood, screaming for Harry as he fell.

When he staggered back to some semblance of rationality, he found himself cradled against Harry’s chest, wrapped in magically-warmed blankets, his body limp and aching as if someone had pulled out all his bones. His cheeks were slick with tears, though he didn’t remember crying, and when he tried to speak, he found that his throat had been stripped raw.

At his croak, Harry stirred. His hand slid up to cradle Draco’s head and his lips brushed his forehead.

“There you are. You scared me.”

“Mmm.” Draco tried to clear his throat but only managed to make it hurt more. _What in bleeding hell had happened to him?_

“Here.” Harry lifted him slightly, holding a glass to his lips. “Drink this.”

It was water. Draco sighed his thanks as it slid down his throat, easing the burning. He took the glass from Harry’s hand and drained it in a few swallows. “Argh!” he finally groaned, “I needed that!”

“Want some more?”

“Mm, no.” He let Harry take the glass from him. As he relaxed into Harry’s embrace again, he took stock of the burning, stinging, throbbing pains in his body, let them wash over him, and uttered another soft groan. This time, the sound was replete with satisfaction. “Merlin’s Bloody Balls. I feel like I’ve been trampled by a Hippogriff.”

“I’m sorry about that.” Harry’s voice was full of regret, and his hands were unnaturally gentle when they touched Draco’s face.

Draco twitched away from his petting hand and looked up at him, startled. “What?”

“I lost control. I’m sorry.”

“Wait… you’re actually _apologizing?_ ”

“I never should have hurt you like that.”

Draco pushed himself up on an elbow to fix an outraged glare on his partner. “Potter, you incredible git, I _asked for it!_ ”

“I know you wanted it rough, but not like that. Not dry-humped and bitten till you bleed.” His fingers found a source of pain at the base of Draco’s throat and stroked it, coming away smeared with blood. “I don’t know why I did it.”

“It’s okay. You can heal it later.” He stooped to catch Harry’s finger in his mouth and sucked his own blood from it. It tasted like salt, metal and magic. “Or Granger can, if you can stand the embarrassment.”

“Me! You’re the one who’d have to admit to a Muggle-born Gryffindor witch that you got buggered within an inch of your life.”

“And you’d have to admit that you went off your head and tried to fuck me into an early grave.”

Harry stroked the hair back from his cheek, tangling his fingers in the overlong strands, running his thumb lightly along his cheekbone. Draco felt his face soften and heat under the other boy’s gentle touch. He smiled sweetly at him.

“You look better. Did it really help?”

“For now.”

Harry cocked his head to one side in a gesture of childish curiosity that almost made Draco laugh. “How?”

“Well, it made me tired enough to sleep.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” He gazed at Harry for a long moment, then shrugged and dropped his eyes. “I don’t think I can explain it to someone as sane as you.”

“Me! Sane?” Harry gave an explosive laugh. “I’m the one who went off his nut and started biting you!” His face fell, turning melancholy, and he reached to finger the bite on Draco’s neck again. “I guess I have impulse control issues.”

“I’m not asking you to control yourself, Harry. I can take anything you dish out.”

“Maybe, but you shouldn’t have to. Especially not on a night like this, when you’re hurt and you’re scared. I should’ve comforted you, not attacked you like a ruddy maniac.”

Draco snorted derisively, “Yeah, because I’m such a delicate flower. I told you, Potter, I wanted it.” He thought of the moments before his brain-blasting orgasm, when he’d secretly hoped that Potter would let loose the fiendfyre pent up inside him, consume Draco with it, burn away the hateful memory of every other man that had touched him, purify him even as it destroyed him. He shuddered with mingled horror and longing. “I wanted more.”

Harry, bless his noble Gryffindor heart, didn’t hear the darkness lurking in those words and responded with a wide, adoring smile. He clasped Draco’s head in both hands, cradling his face between his palms, and leaned in to press a lingering kiss to his lips.

“I’ll love you any way you want, Dragon, you know that. I’ll tie you down, pull all your hair out, beat you black and blue, even bite your beautiful neck and suck your blood like a vampire, if that’s what you want. But not when you’re so,” his smile faded to sadness, “ _wounded_. There are enough people trying to hurt you. I won’t be one of them.”

“Harry…”

“Shh.” He gathered Draco up in his arms and carried them both down onto the mattress. As he pulled the blankets up around their shoulders, he murmured, “I’m tired. Shut your Slytherin gob and go to sleep.”

“Stupid bloody Gryffindor.”

“Yeah.” Harry extinguished the candles with a wave of his wand, then he yawned hugely. “That’s me.”

Draco settled into his shoulder and closed his eyes. “Good night, Harry.”

“‘Night, love.”

 

**_To be continued…_ **


	3. Family Rituals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long, but this chapter was a BEAST to write. My difficulties were aggravated by the fact that I read Chapter 2 again and decided that it sucks, so now I have to go back and rewrite that one - not changing the plot, just fixing the sucky writing - to be happy with the story.
> 
> I should mention that I'm not a huge fan of Pansy Parkinson. I see her as she was in the books - a nasty, whining, bitchy girl with few redeeming characteristics. I've noticed that recent fics tend to make her a much more sympathetic character, and sometimes it works well, but that's not my Pansy. So those of you who like her may not appreciate her cameo in this chapter. Too bad. Anyway, she's pissed out of her mind, here, so she's not on her best behavior.
> 
> This chapter is rather grim and violent, so proceed with caution. See the story tags for specific warnings. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it!

 

— _Malfoy Manor —_

Draco sat curled in an armchair with a book in his lap. The enormous chair was built for lounging—or maybe cuddling and snogging with another person, though he’d never tried it—so it made him look absurdly small, especially when he was dressed in an old, stretched jumper and a pair of baggy Muggle sweatpants that Blaise had given him. This clothing was in no way suitable for the Malfoy Heir, but it was soft, comfortable and above all warm, which Draco needed in the chill atmosphere of the Manor in winter. The morning sunlight streamed in the window, gilding his hair and lending warmth to his pale skin, making him look almost like the Draco Malfoy his friends and enemies thought they knew. And for this brief time, shut in his room with a Potions book and the sun shining, he almost felt like that boy.

A tap on the glass beside him brought Draco’s head up with a snap. He smiled and bounded to his feet to open the casement, letting a large Barn owl land on the sill. It had a rolled magazine tied to its leg.

“Right on time,” Draco said, offering the owl a slice of bacon from his untouched breakfast plate, before relieving it of its package. “Must not be a Weasley owl.”

The owl fixed him with a round, yellow eye and ripped a chunk out of the bacon with its beak—a not so subtle reminder of what it could do to his fingers, if he annoyed it. Draco chuckled softly and sat down in his chair again to examine his mail.

One tug on the string, and the tight roll opened, glossy pages fanning open and spilling a single piece of parchment into his lap. Draco took a moment to appreciate the picture on the magazine’s cover—a ruggedly handsome wizard in the latest racing gear, looking equal parts fierce and photogenic as he put his Firebolt through its paces—then he retrieved the letter. It was written in a now-familiar scrawl with an odd assortment of hearts and Xs for kisses in the margins that made Draco laugh again.

In an attempt to hide the fact that the Chosen One was writing letters to a Junior Death Eater, Potter had taken to pretending that he was a teenaged witch with a passionate crush on the Slytherin Prince. Hiding the letters in magazines was an added touch of genius that Draco attributed to Granger. It was much too subtle for Potter, who would more likely decide that he ought to skywrite his love letters over the Manor by broomstick.

The letters had started out as cute gushing over his beautiful hair and soulful eyes—silly and very un-Potter-like, but amusing enough to lift Draco’s spirits. In the last few days, they’d shifted to something more akin to a breathless bodice-ripper. Either Potter was getting bored with playing the schoolgirl, or he was deliberately trying to goad Draco into some unguarded response that would get them both into serious trouble.

Today’s letter read:

 

 _My dearest darling dragon_ ,

_I’m sitting at the kitchen table, eating scones and pretending that I’m licking clotted cream off your beautiful lips. Now comes the jam. Can you taste it? Mmmm, strawberry. Your favorite._

_It snowed again last night, but the sun is shining today, so we’re planning a Quidditch free-for-all. We have enough players for a decent match but too many Seekers and not enough of anything else. Still, I’d gladly add another Seeker to the line-up, if you want to jump in the floo and join us… Pretty please? Make it my Christmas present. I’ll even let you win and make that_ your _Christmas_ _present._

_I miss you dreadfully, dragon. I wish I could see your perfect face smiling at me from across the table and watch you lean over to eat a scone from my hand. (Remember our last tea party? I fed you something much better than scones!) I wish I could comb your hair with my fingers, nibble on your throat, bite your lips till they turn as red and sweet as this jam, then kiss you so hard that you forget your own name. I wish I had you naked in my bed, where I could have my way with you over and over again, all night, all day, all the rest of my life._

_I plan to do all those things to you and more, so be patient and behave yourself. Spend your time dreaming of my hungry lips, my heaving breasts, my luscious thighs and warm, secret places, and don’t even_ look _at those pureblood beauties your mother keeps shoving at you in hopes of getting a grandchild. Because I promise you, my love, I’ll hex the pert little arse off any slut who puts her hands on my dragon!_

_Write to me and tell me you’re being good. Tell me you miss me. Tell me you love me, because I love you desperately and won’t sleep a wink until I have you lying in my arms again._

_Sloppy wet kisses,_

_Your SBG_

 

Draco groaned and rolled his eyes. Another of Harry’s little games was signing each letter with a different set of initials, forcing Draco to decode them. This one was easy.

 _Just wait till I get my hands on you, my Stupid Bloody Gryffindor,_ Draco thought, as he read the letter through again. _I’ll show you what to do with those heaving breasts and luscious thighs!_

Grabbing both the letter and the magazine, Draco moved to his desk to write his answer. He had only dipped his quill in the ink and poised it above a blank piece of parchment, when he heard a staccato rapping on the bedroom door. He froze for the space of a heartbeat, then dropped the quill and reached for Harry’s letter. He was still shoving it under the magazine when the door flew open and his father strode through it in a swirl of expensive robes, perfect grooming and icy annoyance. Draco instinctively shot to his feet.

“So this is where you’re hiding,” Lucius drawled.

“I’m not hiding,” Draco said before his brain could catch up with his tongue, “this is my bedroom. I live here.”

“The day is half gone. Guests are arriving, your mother is looking for you, and you are…” Lucius’ arctic grey eyes swept over him, taking in his misshapen Muggle clothing. Then his brows lifted and his lips curled in a sneer. “…not even dressed.”

Draco unconsciously tugged at the sleeve hanging down over his palm. “I was cold this morning.”

“And you could not manage a decent warming spell?”

Draco bit back a reminder that, as an underage wizard, he wasn’t allowed to cast a warming spell and that this bloody, great mausoleum of a house never got properly warm, no matter how much magic you poured into it. As usual when facing his father, Draco’s mind was buzzing with cutting retorts and witty ripostes that he never dared voice. All he could do was school his features not to reveal his thoughts and keep his sodding mouth shut.

Lucius gave a snort of disgust. His eyes jumped to the strange owl sitting on the windowsill, grooming its feathers, and they narrowed in suspicion. Who’s bird is that?”

“Just a delivery owl. It brought my magazine.”

Those eyes that missed no detail and no chink in Draco’s armor flicked to the desk and the brightly-colored magazine lying on it. “You’re skulking in your room, looking like a derelict Muggle and leaving your mother to entertain our guests alone, so you can read sports magazines? Or are you… enjoying the pictures?”

The import of his words and the insult carried by them were unmistakeable, but Draco pretended not to hear. Summoning the petulant, sulky tone that came so naturally to his lips, he said, “You know I need a new broomstick for Quidditch. That Nimbus is just pathetic, compared to the newer models, and I’m never going to win a match with it. I need something that can compete with Potter’s Firebolt.”

Lucius’ eyes flashed for a moment, telling Draco that he’d hit a nerve. He hated being reminded that his son, the perfect Slytherin prince, always came in second to Harry Potter. “We’ll see about a new broom when you’ve earned it.” Turning for the door, he threw over his shoulder, “Your mother is expecting you for luncheon. Do not disappoint her. Then see if you can find some suitable clothing for this evening’s party.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You will, of course, behave as befits my son and heir tonight. We have a number of important guests coming.”

Draco felt his stomach drop. He had a sudden, sick feeling that his father’s expectations of his son and heir did not end with wearing his robes well or making polite conversation.

His lips were so stiff that he could barely get the words out. “Yes, sir.”

“And, ahh…” Lucius paused with his hand on the doorknob and turned his cold eyes on Draco again. He had assumed a casual air, as if tossing off a just-remembered point, but Draco was not fooled. This was why he had taken the extraordinary step of coming to his son’s bedroom in person to deliver his instructions.

“After the midnight toast, when the guests start to leave, I need you in the library. Don’t dawdle. Come straight there, and, ah, don’t mention it to your mother.”

Draco did not manage even a ‘Yes, sir’ this time. He didn’t have the breath for it. But Lucius didn’t seem to notice, as he spun around and strode hastily from the room and pulled the door shut on his heels. The latch clicked. The snap of Lucius’ booted feet against the marble floor receded into the distance. Draco remained standing, staring white-faced at the door, for another handful of heartbeats. Then his legs abruptly gave out and he dropped into his chair.

Fuck.

Nausea roiled in his stomach and brought the bile up in his throat. He ducked his head to his knees and struggled to draw even breaths, to fight back the wave of panic that took him.

 _Fuck!_ What was he supposed to do now? How was he supposed to get out? He was so utterly, completely, horrifically _fucked!_ But he couldn’t give in now, couldn’t let them see how close he was to breaking. He had to hold himself together, play the perfect Malfoy prince, protect his family and his lover…

Harry. Harry was still waiting for an answer to his letter. If he didn’t hear from Draco, he’d assume the worst and come tearing over here to rescue his Slytherin love from his evil family, like the stupid bloody Gryffindor that he was. Then they would _both_ be fucked!

Sucking in another calming breath, Draco straightened up and pulled the blank parchment toward him again. His hands were shaking when he dipped the quill in the inkwell. He desperately wanted to reach out to Harry—to tell him what his father had said, how frightened he was about tonight, how unimaginably horrible it was to be alone in this house full of sadists, sycophants and Death Eaters without his Gryffindor hero to watch his back—but he didn’t dare. The mails weren’t safe. His father might intercept the owl. He didn’t even know whose owl it was or where it went when it left the Manor. So rather than risk exposure to relieve his overburdened heart, he fell back on his usual answer.

His hand was still trembling, making the ink sputter slightly on the page, but he managed to scrawl a simple line drawing of a snake. This is all he dared send to Harry—meaningless, rather childish sketches that communicated nothing except the simple fact that he was still alive and able to hold a quill. He wasn’t much of an artist, but snakes were easy. So were broomsticks, Snitches, and even frogs if he stuck to basics. Mammals were beyond him. He’d tried to produce a ferret for his first effort, but it had ended up looking like something hanging from the rafters of Hagrid’s cabin. After that, he’d stuck to the simple stuff, and he was getting good enough that he could give his drawings different expressions.

Today’s snake was wall-eyed and wore an imbecilic grin. By the time he had added a fat, human tongue lolling from between its fangs, his hand had steadied and a smile had crept into his eyes. He could imagine the grin on Harry’s face when he saw the silly drawing, and it eased the gnawing fear in his stomach. He added a flourishing SSG—for Slimy Slytherin Git—then folded the scrap of parchment.

The owl was still waiting patiently for his reply. Draco crossed to the window, bringing the note and another piece of bacon, which he offered to the bird first. It ripped the snack into pieces, wolfed them down, then snapped its beak to signal that it was ready. Draco held out the note for the owl to take. It had no name or address on it, but the bird was unperturbed by this.

“You know who it’s for,” he murmured.

The owl gave him a condescending look, ruffled its wings, then launched itself through the open window. Draco watched it go with a lump of sadness in his throat and a sudden weariness weighing down his limbs. When the owl had disappeared into the watery blue, winter sky, he turned back to survey his room. His eyes drifted longingly on the bed.

He was so tired. So incredibly, achingly tired. He wanted nothing more than to crawl into the middle of that huge mattress, wrap himself in layers of protective spells, and sleep the clock round. Unfortunately, he was under orders to present himself for luncheon, which gave him less than an hour to bathe, dress, and try to mask the gaunt illness in his face. Even if he dared to defy his father’s orders, the chances were that the moment his head hit the pillow sleep would desert him. He’d lie there for hours, staring up at the green canopy, every nerve stretched and every sense tuned, waiting for footsteps approaching his door.

With a sigh that came from the very bottom of his weary soul, he turned away from the inviting bed and started toward his bathroom, peeling off his clothes as he went. He sent a spell arrowing ahead of him, hoping that the number of adults using magic in the house would hide his little bit of illicit magic, so the water was already blasting and starting to heat when he stepped into the shower. Tilting his head back, he let the spray strike his face and pour down his body, reddening his skin and cooking the tension from his muscles.

He could do this. He _had_ to do this. He just needed a minute to collect himself, and if a few hot tears mingled with the water on his cheeks, well, no one was there to see them.

*** *** ***

The party felt interminable. Draco wandered through the throng of guests, dressed in his finest robes, holding a crystal glass of champagne in one beringed hand, his best haughty Lord of the Manor smile on his face, hating every second of it. He had always loved Christmas—for the lights and music when he was a child, then later for the display of family wealth and influence—but tonight, it all felt forced and sour.

The guests seemed to notice it, as well. They all drank a bit too much, laughed a little too loudly, and drew into sullen clots around the edges of the room when their hosts had moved on to spread Holiday Cheer elsewhere. The Ministry people congregated near the hearth, with their spouses tucked in close to their sides for protection. The Death Eaters stood in groups of two or three, eyeing the crowd cynically and muttering to each other between deep pulls on their drinks. A few Malfoy family friends who didn’t fall into either of the other groups tried valiantly to keep up the illusion of a joyful Christmas celebration, but the younger guests had simply disappeared. Knowing his childhood friends as he did, Draco suspected that they had found a hiding place well away from parental eyes to do some serious drinking.

Draco couldn’t help looking at them all—Ministry drones, Death Eaters, lifelong family friends—and wondering which one had bought him for the night like a fucking Christmas pudding. He’d been granted a reprieve since his return from Hogwarts. Six days of peace, with no hands grabbing at him, no voices ordering him to his knees, no bodies rubbing against his or shoving their way inside him. Six nights alone in his bed with only his fantasies of Harry for company.

As of tonight, his reprieve was over. His father hadn’t said it in so many words, but his meaning had been plain. One of these smiling, laughing, celebrating people had bought himself a Christmas treat.

Feeling suddenly as if all the air had been sucked out of the room, Draco spun away from the crowd of laughing faces and pushed his way over to the piano. He was hoping for some breathing space, a moment alone to regain his balance. Instead, he found Pansy Parkinson sitting at the piano, sipping at her tenth or eleventh glass of champagne and plunking sullenly at the keys.

Fucking Pansy. The very last person he wanted to tangle with tonight. Why wasn’t she off with Theo and Blaise, drinking herself into a stupor?

She glanced up from the keys, giving Draco a bleary look as if she weren’t entirely sure who he was, then grinned and pulled her robes in close to bare a length of the bench beside her.

“Come on, Drakey-poo. Play something for me.”

He scowled at her, fairly caught and knowing he wouldn’t get away from her without a scene. “Only if you promise never to call me that again. _Pansy-cakes_.”

“Oooh!” Her lips, painted with smeary red lipstick, formed a pout. “You’re so mean.”

“And you’re so pissed. Budge up.” He sat down beside her, nudging her with a hip to slide her a few inches to the left. “What shall I play?”

“Something naughty. One of those German drinking songs you learned from the Durmstrang boys.”

Draco smirked and touched the keys. His fingers were clumsy with lack of practice for the first few bars, then he found his groove and played a soft, lilting version of his mother’s favorite Christmas hymn. Mother had never set foot in a Muggle church, but she loved their Christmas music. This one was called _O, Little Town of Bethlehem_ , or something equally inane, but it had a lovely melody, so he played it through a second time, savoring the music that flowed from his fingertips.

Pansy pouted again, whining, “I wanted a drinking song!” She leaned close, putting her lips to his ear and whispering soggily, “Or a fucking song. Take me to your room, Dragon, and play me a fucking song.”

Her unknowing use of Harry’s pet name for him went through Draco like a dull blade. His face hardened, his hands went stiff, and all the music drained out of him. He plunked out the last few bars and almost snatched his hands from the keyboard.

“You’re a lousy drunk, Pans,” he growled.

She pulled back and blinked at him. Her eyes studied his face for a moment, going from surprised, to hurt, to enraged in record time. Then she spat, “Right, I forgot. Draco Sodding Malfoy is too good for us now.”

He turned an accusing glare on her. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You, _Drakey-poo_ , and who you’re _fucking_.”

“I’m not fucking anyone, and _stop calling me that._ ”

“Hoo, that’s rich! When you go prancing out of the common room every night, shaking your pretty arse, and come back the next day looking like you’ve been fucked six ways to Sunday? Who do you think you’re fooling?”

“ _Will you shut up?!_ ” Draco hissed, his eyes darting around the room in alarm. Thankfully, no one seemed to be paying attention to the two squabbling teenagers behind the piano, and for all her nastiness, Pansy had not raised her voice above a whine.

“Ohhh, is Drakey scared that Daddy’ll find out he’s been taking it up the arse?”

“Bitch.” Jumping to his feet, he bent down to bring his mouth close to her ear and snarled, “In case you’re wondering, pissed out of your mind is not a good look on you!”

Without waiting for her inevitable reply, he stormed across the room and out the door. He knew he shouldn’t do it. His father had expressly told him to behave like a Malfoy and stay through the midnight toast, but he couldn’t take one more minute of this appalling party. If he didn’t get out, now, he’d start screaming like a bally lunatic and that would _really_ upset his father!

Did lunacy run in the family? Were there Malfoys locked up in tower rooms somewhere, howling at the moon and tearing at their perfect, platinum hair? Very likely. And Draco himself was likely destined to join them in another thirty fucking seconds.

He reached the clear air of the hallway, sucking in a breath that was blessedly free of the stench of Death Eater and drunken twat, and fled down it toward the library. It never occurred to him to go anywhere else, no matter how badly he wished that he could lock himself in his room and hide in a wardrobe, like he had when he was frightened as a child. It was bad enough that he’d left the party early. He didn’t dare make the offense worse by forcing Lucius to come looking for him.

The library was empty. The fire was burning brightly, the candles lit, a book tossed negligently on the table beside a large, leather armchair. Everything about it spoke of privilege, comfort and ease, but it sent a shudder down Draco’s spine.

He moved to a chair that faced the door, wanting to confront whatever came through it head on, and sat down. He clasped his hands in his lap and schooled his features into cool detachment. Then he waited.

Five minutes passed. Ten. Fifteen. His muscles were beginning to ache with tension and sweat to run down his back beneath his heavy dress robes. Twenty minutes. Then the door opened and his father strode through it. Alone.

Draco rose to his feet as gracefully as he could manage when his entire body was coiled tight in panic. He kept his perfect, white, Malfoy mask in place as he waited for his father to say something, but his hands were shaking very slightly, so he hid them in the folds of his robes.

Lucius raked him with his gaze, taking in every detail at a glance, then he said, “Take off your jewelry. And leave your wand.”

Draco obediently stripped off his ring and pulled his wand from his pocket, setting them carefully on the table beside him. His fingers were still trembling when he reached for the dragon brooch on his collar, and he had to fumble with it for a moment before he could open the clasp. Then it joined his other belongings on the table. He felt oddly naked, as he let his hands fall to his sides again, in spite of the layers of silk and velvet that covered his body.

Lucius nodded his approval and held out his hand. “Come with me.”

Draco crossed the room, stepping close to his father and accepting the clasp of his hand on his arm. His face gave no hint of the panic bubbling inside him, as Lucius’ betrayed none of his excitement, but Draco could feel it in the fierce bite of his fingers and hear it in his quickened breathing. Lucius was as eager as Draco was reluctant to reach their destination.

Together, they left the room and strode down the hallway toward a large tapestry that hung on the wall at its end. The tapestry depicted a scene of some distant Malfoy ancestor in plate armor slaying trolls, lifting the severed head of a troll chieftain by its stiff brush of hair, and it had hung in this same spot since the Manor was raised hundreds of years before. It concealed a doorway and a long, straight, dark stair that Draco knew well. The way down to the servants’ halls, the kitchens, the cellars. And the dungeons.

“Where are we going?” Draco didn’t know why he asked. He certainly did not expect an answer. But he couldn’t walk toward that doorway and everything it implied in silence.

“Hold your tongue,” Lucius snapped.

“Don’t you…” He broke off, swallowed the tightness in his throat and tried again. “Don’t you want me to…” They had never spoken about what Draco did for his father, and Draco found he couldn’t make the words come out of his mouth now. He let the question die and waited for his father to hex him. Or hit him. Or call him foul names and throw him bodily down the stairs into the dungeon.

Instead, Lucius tightened his grip on his son and said, fiercely, “This isn’t about what I want, you fool! It’s about our future. Our _master_.”

“He’s not my master.”

Lucius whipped aside the tapestry and shoved Draco roughly down the first few steps before following him into the looming, torchlit maw. “Silence! I won’t have such treachery spoken in my house!”

“Then let me leave your house.” Draco halted halfway down the stair and turned to fix desperate eyes on his father. He sensed that he was walking into something far worse, far more damaging and more permanent, than a hard, bloody fuck up against the wall of the dungeon. If he didn’t stop it now, he’d never come back from this. “Let me go, Father. Please. I don’t want to betray you and Mother. I don’t want to endanger you or disappoint you. But I _can’t_ serve your master!”

“You do and you will. You have no choice in the matter.” Lucius gave him a shove that nearly sent him headlong down the stair, but Draco caught at the wall and steadied himself.

“Just let me walk out of here and disappear! I won’t say a word about your plans, won’t make a move against you, I swear! I’ll simply vanish! Please, Father. Whatever this is you have planned, don’t make me part of it. _Please!_ ”

In the flickering torchlight, Draco could almost convince himself that he saw regret in his father’s face, but his next words banished that unworthy thought. “The Dark Lord has shown me a way to regain his trust. I will not fail him a second time. Neither will you.”

This was clearly the last word on the subject, and Draco put up no further fight when Lucius grabbed his arm and marched him down the stairs. They passed the kitchens, then the cellars, and finally stopped at the bottom of a deep well of stone. Massive oaken doors on either side let into the dungeons, but Lucius ignored them. By now, Draco had an inkling of where they were going, so he was not surprised when Lucius drew his wand and stepped up to a blank stretch of stone wall. Lifting both arms, he tilted his head back, closed his eyes and muttered a spell as he swept his wand across the empty surface.

In the wake of the wand’s passage, the stone seemed to ripple, thin and peel away, like oil being disturbed on the surface of a pond. Then it vanished. Lucius pushed Draco through the opening, into the dim, low-ceilinged, firelit room beyond, and stepped in after him. The opening sealed at their backs.

Draco knew this room well. He had spent many happy hours here as a child, trailing along behind his father, gazing in wonder at the vast cabinets, shelves, tables and boxes full of magical artifacts and family heirlooms. This was Lucius’ private vault where he kept the Dark secrets of generations of Malfoys. Never in his life had Draco known his father to let anyone enter this room other than a full-blood Malfoy—in other words, no one but Draco and himself—until tonight.

To his shock and growing dread, Draco saw that the chamber was full of people. More than a dozen figures stood between him and the hearth, casting ominous shadows across the rough stone floor, while still more lurked around the walls beyond the reach of the firelight. They all wore black robes, with hoods lying about their shoulders and wands in their hands. And they all turned as one when Draco stepped forward, fixing eager eyes on him.

Death Eaters. All of the Death Eaters who had attended the party, plus several others who must have arrived at the Manor in secret. His Aunt Bellatrix. Her husband Rodolphus and his brother Rabastan. Crabbe and Goyle. Mulciber. Yaxley. Dolohov, Rowle, MacNair… more Death Eaters than he had ever seen in one place before. And they were all staring at him. Waiting for him.

Bellatrix let out a mad cackle of delight that seemed to make the very air shiver. “Looky, looky, it’s my little nevvy!”

At the same moment, the flames on the hearth flared emerald green, and a figure appeared among them, spinning fast. Draco instinctively recoiled but found his retreat blocked by his father. He felt Lucius’ hand close on his arm in a vice grip, but it was meant for restraint, not for reassurance.

Under Draco’s horrified eyes, the figure in the flames stopped spinning and stepped onto the hearth. It was tall and skeletally thin, with bone-white bare feet and hands like spiders’ legs. Its hairless head turned as it scanned the room, then its eyes fastened on Draco—red as frozen blood with vertical slits for pupils—and a grotesque parody of a smile stretched its mouth.

“Ah, Draco,” Lord Voldemort said, “how good of you to come.”

*** *** ***

“Master Draco!”

The shrill, squeaky voice cut through Draco’s head like a goblin blade through soft cheese. He groaned and tried to bat it away, but a throb of pain in his arm made him clutch it against his ribs again.

“Master Draco, is you awake?”

He pried up his eyelids to find a pair of tennis ball-sized eyes floating just a few inches from his own.

At this sign of life, the elf gave a truly skull-splitting shriek and cried, “You is to wake up now, young master!”

“Lissy. Fuck off,” Draco muttered.

“Lissy cannot do this. Lissy is ordered by the Master to get you up and bathed and fed.”

Draco groaned again at that and turned his face into the silken fabric beneath his cheek. His entire body hurt, with bright loci of pain in places that he didn’t dare think about and a pulsing wash of agony—both remembered and immediate—flooding all the spaces in between. He had never felt such pain, hadn’t thought that it was possible to survive such pain, but now it seemed an inevitable part of him. Burned into muscle and bone. Throbbing beneath his skin in time to his heartbeat. Filling his mouth with bile and screams he dared not utter.

“Drink your potions, Master Draco. They will make you feel better.”

That brought Draco’s head up and his eyes open, squinting against the daylight. He blinked to bring the elf into focus and saw two small potions bottles in her hands. “Potions?”

“The Master is giving these potions to Lissy, telling her that you is to drink them.”

Potions. From his father, who had been there and knew what they had done to him. Potions for the pain and bleeding—if there was any mercy in this world at all.

With a soul-deep groan of agony, Draco heaved himself up on his right elbow, then pushed himself into a seated position. He was dimly aware that he’d been lying huddled in the middle of his own bed, with his dress robes draped over him like a makeshift blanket. Beneath the robes, he was naked.

As he sat up, the robes slipped down to bare his torso. The chill air of the unheated room touched him, making the bloody claw marks on his back and ribs sting fiercely. He reached out a hand for the potions and felt the throb of agony in his arm again, but he didn’t care. He needed what was in that bottle at any cost.

Lissy handed him a small, blue bottle and watched intently as he downed the contents in one swallow. As he returned the bottle to her and took the second, this one clear crystal with a murky green liquid in it, she caught his left wrist and turned it to expose the ragged cut, about four inches long, that ran from the crook of his elbow down his forearm. It was no longer bleeding, but it seemed to gape open, like a pair of pouting lips, and the skin around it was mottled an ugly purple.

“Lissy will heal that, after Master Draco bathes. And the other wounds.”

Draco just nodded and jerked his arm from her grasp. He knew that he needed the elf’s healing, but the thought of another creature seeing what had been done to his body sickened him—even a creature who had seen him in every state of dress and undress, through every illness or injury, since he was born. He drank down the second potion without meeting Lissy’s enormous eyes, then fell back limply on the bed.

“You must be getting up now, Master Draco. You must be getting bathed. Lissy will help…”

“No.” Draco pushed himself up again and slowly, stiffly, with every nerve in his body protesting, crawled to the edge of the mattress. Bad as he felt, he could feel the potions taking hold, easing the pain and putting some strength in his muscles. When he swung his feet to the floor and stood, his legs held him up, though his head swam alarmingly and he had to catch the bedpost for balance. His stomach heaved, but he swallowed it and fastened his eyes on the distant door to the bathroom.

He had to make it that far. _Without_ Lissy’s help. He had to make his legs move and his lungs work and his eyes focus…

He took a step and felt yet more pain blossom inside him. A burning, aching, terrible—and terribly familiar—pain. He knew without looking that he had blood on his thighs and had left a red-brown stain on the pale, green silk of the coverlet. Lifting his head at an arrogant angle, more to keep his eyes from the evidence of his humiliation than to impress upon the house-elf his innate superiority, he started walking toward his goal.

Once into the bathroom, he shut and locked the door—not that it would keep out a house-elf, if she decided to come in—and turned on the shower full blast. Then he sank down on the tile floor and curled up under the scalding spray. He didn’t bother to actually wash himself, not wanting to touch his various wounds or to feel hands on his body, even his own, just lay there and let the water pound down on him.

He must have fallen asleep in the shower, because the next thing he knew, he was back on his bed, spreadeagled naked on his stomach, with the house-elf smoothing a healing salve over his torn back. When he groaned and lifted his head, she patted his shoulder and said,

“Young master needs to keep still. Lissy is nearly done.”

He obediently let his head fall to the mattress again and his eyes drift half closed. He was clean and dry, his hair falling softly over his face. The pain in his body had eased, and a flesh-colored bandage covered the wound on his arm. He could feel Lissy’s fingers tracing each cut and tear on his back, and with her touch, the stinging subsided.

After a few quiet moments, during which Draco began to realize that he felt almost human, he asked, “Will they leave scars, Lissy?”

She squeaked in distress and touched a spot below his left shoulder blade. It still burned and ached, even after her efforts at healing. “A few is deep enough to scar. Most is fading quickly.” Then she sniffed and added, dolefully, “Master Draco is being a bad boy to be punished so harshly.”

Draco said nothing to that. How could he explain to his mother’s house-elf that he was being punished for his father’s failings, rather than his own?

She worked quietly for another few minutes, then she touched Draco’s shoulder and said, “Lissy is finished. You is having your supper now.”

“Supper?” Draco pushed himself away from the mattress and turned to find Lissy holding out fresh robes to him. He took them and pushed his arms into the sleeves, noting that most of the pain had dulled to stiffness and faint itching. “How long was I asleep?”

“Two days.”

“ _Two_ _days?_ ” He jerked around to look out the windows, noting for the first time that the ground was covered with fresh snow and the sun was dropping down toward the treetops to the West. “I’ve been in here for _two days?_ ”

Lissy nodded so earnestly that her ears flapped. “You has been very ill, Master Draco.”

 _That’s one word for it,_ he thought sourly.

Then his eyes moved to the desk, and he saw two magazines, neatly rolled and tied with string, sitting on it. Harry’s magazines.

Rolling off the bed, he crossed to the desk in a few, swift strides, grateful that his body was working again. There, he picked up one of the magazines and examined it for signs of tampering. It appeared to be untouched, but that assuaged only one of his worries. The other, more urgent problem was that he had gone two days without answering Harry’s letters and his obsessively protective Gryffindor lover would probably be readying an assault on the Manor by now.

“Lissy, did you put these here?”

She nodded. “Lissy brought them. The owl flew round and round the Manor, trying to get in to Master Draco, then perched above the door and would not allow the Master to come near. Lissy had to catch it. The Master was angry, but he allowed Lissy to bring your mail.”

“I need to send a letter, Lissy, at once. Where is my owl?”

The elf began to wring her hands. “You must not be writing letters now, young master,” she said reproachfully. “You is to eat your supper and be ready for the Master when he calls. Lissy has orders.”

“Bring me some food and I’ll eat. But I also need to write a letter.”

She washed her hands more anxiously, gazing up at him with huge, tearful eyes, but Draco did not relent. Summoning what dignity he still had, he glared down at her and said, “Find my owl and send it to my window. At once. And bring my supper.”

Lissy bobbed a convulsive bow, still rubbing her hands together, and whimpered, “Yes, Master Draco.”

“I promise that I’ll follow my father’s orders. You won’t have to punish yourself. And Lissy…”

“Yes, Master Draco?”

“Since we’re both following orders, you don’t have to mention the owl to my father.”

Tears were dripping from her eyes and down her nose by now. “No, Master Draco.”

“You may bring the food first, since it worries you so much.”

“You is going to get punished again, young master, I knows it. You is going to make the Master angry.”

“No, I’m not.” That was a lie, of course. He was going to be punished, but not for sending a letter to his Gryffindor lover. “Fetch my supper, Lissy.”

Five minutes later, Draco sat at his desk, eating with surprising appetite considering the state he’d been in when he woke, and staring at a blank piece of parchment. Once again, the urge to pour out his fears to Harry was nearly overwhelming, but this letter even more than the others had to be discreet. He was sending his own owl—easily recognizable to many inside and outside his family—to the home of known blood traitors and enemies. He couldn’t risk saying anything that would incriminate himself, Harry or the Weasleys. Which meant he couldn’t say much of anything at all.

With a defeated sigh, he dipped his quill in the ink and began to draw. It was a Christmas tree this time, with a lopsided star on top and a few packages dotted around the base. Then, instead of his usual signature, he wrote with a flourish, _Happy Christmas._

His Eagle owl was sitting on the sill of his open window, waiting, by the time he finished. He rolled the parchment and tied it with a Slytherin green ribbon, then held it out so the bird could take it in its beak.

“Take that to Harry at the Burrow,” he said, very quietly. “There’s no address on it, but you know the way.”

The owl gave him a look from one flat, yellow eye that said, very clearly, _Of course I do, you puny human._ Then it lifted effortlessly from the sill and soared up into the evening sky.

Draco breathed a sign of relief as it vanished into the distance. Hopefully he had acted quickly enough to forestall some idiotic act of bravery on Harry’s part. If he hadn’t, well, then the consequences were on his father’s head. Lucius had put them all in this hideous position and Lucius would have to deal with the wrath of Harry Potter when it hit.

No sooner had he formed this thought in his head, than he heard a familiar staccato rap on his door. His father’s snake-headed cane. Draco closed and latched the window, then turned to face the door. He kept his back straight and his head lifted at the approved, arrogant angle, wrapped in Malfoy dignity, in spite of the fact that he was naked and barefoot under his robe, with his uncombed hair falling in a mess around his face.

“Come in,” he called coolly.

The door swung open and Lucius strode through it. Draco opened his mouth to greet him, but the words died on his lips when he saw that, this time, his father was not alone. A second man entered on his heels—tall, athletic, handsome in a harsh and predatory way—a man that Draco recognized all too easily. He had a brief, sickening flashback to the greenhouse at night and a voice purring in his ear, _You can suck it or you can ride it… I will be in you tonight_ , and his knees abruptly gave out.

He landed hard in his desk chair, winded by shock and horror, while his arms and legs seemed to be trying to retract into his robes.

Lucius ushered his guest forward, saying in his most frigid tones, “My son overindulged at our Christmas festivities. He has been sleeping it off since. On your feet, Draco, or are you still too hungover for courtesy?”

Draco stood but did not venture any closer to the two men. “I’m feeling much better, Father.”

“Hmmph,” Lucius snorted through his nose. His gaze swept the room, looking for traces of Draco’s two-day “illness”, and Draco was grateful that Lissy had followed her orders so thoroughly. The rumpled and filthy robes were gone, the bed made up with a pristine, emerald silk comforter, and the tray of healing supplies had vanished. No one would know that, just an hour earlier, he’d been lying unconscious in the middle of that princely bed, bleeding from his back, arm and arse, closer to dead than alive.

With a satisfied nod, Lucius turned on his heel and headed for the door. “Summon the house-elf if you need anything. I’ll place muting and protection spells on the room to ensure your privacy, but the elf can get through easily enough.” His merciless eyes touched Draco for just a moment, as he grasped the doorknob. “I’ll tell your mother that you’re not quite recovered.”

“Father, wait,” Draco called, an edge of desperation in his voice.

Lucius did not wait. Did not look at him again. Just pulled the door shut with a snap.

The man paced across the room to him, wand in hand, a glint in his eyes that reminded Draco uncannily of a tiger contemplating its lunch. “So, young Malfoy, we meet again. You do remember that I promised we would.” He stopped a few paces from Draco and ran his predator’s eyes over him. “But you’ve been so busy… too busy for old friends, apparently.”

Draco licked his lips with a suddenly dry tongue and tried to come up with an answer, but found none. He knew he should try to talk his way out of this—out of being used like a whore in his own bed—but his brain had shut off the moment his father walked out of the room and left him here with this man. With his buyer.

The man circled him, stalked him, eyed him hungrily, then he moved in close and lifted a hand to brush the hair away from Draco’s cheek. “Still as lovely as ever, I see.”

“Not quite,” Draco finally managed to rasp out. “Like you said, I’ve been busy.”

The man smiled. It was not a reassuring sight. “Ah, but a few battle scars only add to your charms. Come, now, Draco. Aren’t you tired of the Shrinking Virgin act by now?”

With that, he slipped his hand behind Draco’s head and pulled him into a kiss. There was no gentleness in it, no seduction, just hard lips grinding against his own and a thick tongue ramming between his teeth. Draco accepted it because he had no choice. He tilted up his chin, opened his mouth wide, and let the tongue plunder him.

At the same time, he felt a hand slip through the front of his robe and cup his balls. For a moment, he thought the man was going to stroke him, warm him, try to prepare him for what was to come, then he felt the fingers tighten and give him a practiced squeeze. He yelped, pulled back, and found himself sprawled on his back on the bed with his legs spread and his robes rucked up around his armpits.

The man smiled sardonically. “You won’t need those clothes.”

He twitched his wand and Draco’s robes vanished. Another flick of his wand brought black cords snaking out from the bedposts.

“On your belly.”

Draco obeyed, rolling onto his stomach and scrambling around to lie with his face on the pillow. The moment he was still, he felt the cords twist round his wrists and ankles, cinching tight and retracting until his limbs were stretched taut. A knee planted on the mattress between his spread thighs. A hand stroked across his torn skin, making him buck helplessly against his bonds.

“Someone’s been playing rough.”

The hand continued down his spine to the small of his back, stroked over the curve of one cheek, and stopped when it found his bollocks again. They shrank instinctively away from his touch.

“Relax,” that gloating voice purred from just above him. “This is going to take all night.”

Draco turned his face into the pillow and clenched his eyes shut, grateful that he was lying face down and didn’t have to look at his ravisher. Or show his tears. The man began to touch him in earnest—fondling, kissing, biting, filling him with tongue, fingers and cock—and he bit his lip till blood ran down his chin to hold back his cries. 

Shutting his mind to what was happening, Draco let a single name play over and over again in his head. Like an incantation. A shield spell that would protect his spirit from the evil that was invading his body. A light that would never go out and a strength that would never fail him. Even if it couldn’t help him now.

_…harry harry harry harry harry harry harry harry…_

 

**_To be continued…_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, we will find out exactly what happened to Draco in the vault, but not immediately and not all at once. Thank you for reading!


	4. A Pain in the Hand

 

Draco was not on the train back to Hogwarts. Harry had not really expected him to be there, assuming that his parents would return him to Hogsmeade as they had taken him, but he couldn’t just sit there wondering, so he searched the train from end to end. Twice. When he had looked into every compartment and annoyed an entire train full of people without finding Malfoy, he sulked for the rest of the trip.

He was not in the Great Hall for dinner, either. Harry stared at the spot he usually occupied between Crabbe and Goyle, his sulking now turned into full-blown brooding.

Dean noticed that he was glaring non-stop at the Slytherin table and remarked, dryly, “Not over it yet, Harry?”

Harry flicked him a look but didn’t respond. His nerves were scraped raw with worry, his chest aching with the need to see his dragon again—just to _see_ him, to know he was alive and well—and it took every ounce of restraint he possessed not to go charging over to the Slytherin table and demand to know where he was. He didn’t have the attention to spare for his housemates’ ribbing.

“Leave Harry alone,” Ginny chided. “He just spent two whole weeks in a house full of redheads. Not one bleach-blond ferret to stalk. I think he’s going through withdrawals.”

“I wonder where he is,” Hermione said in a slightly-too-casual voice. “Malfoy, I mean. He wasn’t on the train.”

“Off torturing Muggles with his Da?” Seamus offered with a snigger.

“Maybe the whole family got picked up by the Aurors,” Dean suggested, “and Malfoy’s in a cell in Azkaban right now.”

“Don’t,” Hermione murmured, her eyes cutting over to Harry and darkening with worry. “That would be awful.”

Seamus snorted. “This is Malfoy we’re talking about! I’d like to see him trying to study for his NEWTs with dementors swarming around him. Not that they’d bother with him, since he doesn’t have a soul to suck out.”

Harry abruptly pushed himself to his feet and stepped over the bench. “I’m headed up to the tower. I’ll see you later.”

“Hang on, mate, I’ll…” Ron began, but Harry cut him off with a shake of his head.

He started for the door with Seamus’ gleeful shout following him. “Go get ‘im, Harry! Catch that ferret and put ‘im in a cage where he belongs!”

Harry shut his ears to his housemates’ unwitting cruelty and hurried from the room. They didn’t know how much they were hurting him. They didn’t know that Harry loved Draco and that the Slytherin was in mortal danger simply because he loved Harry back. They laughed about Harry’s obsession but had no bloody idea just how obsessed he really was—with saving Draco from the very fate they found so hilarious.

Because a cell in Azkaban was _so_ _fucking_ _hilarious_.

He bolted up to Gryffindor tower to retrieve his invisibility cloak—‘never roam the castle without it’ was his motto—then headed for the one place where he was absolutely guaranteed to find Malfoy. If he was in the castle and not with his housemates, he would be in their private broom closet-bedroom. If he wasn’t…

Thankfully, Harry didn’t have to finish that thought. When he reached the room, he found the door locked, the security spells in place and Draco Malfoy curled up in the middle of the mattress, fast asleep. He still wore his traveling cloak and had a bag of clothing and books beside him, telling Harry that he had not even stopped by the dungeons before coming here. His posture was huddled, defensive, even frightened, but his face looked peaceful in the soft moonlight filtering through the curtains.

Harry took a moment to simply enjoy the sight of his love curled up in their bed, sleeping, safe, then he shrugged off the invisibility cloak and crawled over to him. Draco did not stir. Harry ran a hand through his untrimmed, rumpled hair and bent to whisper in his ear, “Dragon?”

The Slytherin’s breath hitched slightly, and his head turned, searching for that beloved voice even in sleep.

“Wake up, Dragon.” Harry stretched out on his side and curved his body close behind the other boy’s, sharing his warmth and solidity with him, then he propped himself up on one elbow and continued to stroke his hair. “Wake up. Please.”

“Hmm,” Draco breathed. His lashes twitched up for a moment, then fell again as he twisted around and burrowed his face into Harry’s chest. He inhaled the familiar scent of his lover and murmured, “Harry.”

“Yes.” Harry pressed a kiss to the Slytherin’s forehead. “I missed you at dinner. I was afraid you hadn’t come back.”

“Hmm,” Draco just sighed again, as if he didn’t have the energy to form actual words.

“Draco, look at me,” Harry urged, his fingers sinking into Draco’s hair and tilting up his head. When the silver lashes obediently lifted again, he said, “Have you had any dinner?”

“Not hungry.”

Harry petted his hair, kissed him, peered into his eyes in hopes of seeing some hint of what was passing in his mind but finding only shadows. In frustration, he tugged his wand from his pocket and threw an _Incendio_ at one of the wall sconces. A single candle lit and threw warm light over Draco’s face. Harry studied him intently, still cradling his head in one hand to keep him from retreating again.

“You haven’t been sleeping,” he said, concern roughening his voice.

“I was asleep until some Gryffindor git woke me up,” Draco pointed out, reasonably.

“And before that?” Haunted grey eyes skated away from his, telling Harry what he had already guessed. “Dragon, you can’t go on this way. You’ll put yourself in hospital.”

“I’ll sleep now that I’m here.”

“Will you eat?” He grunted a negative and tried to bury his face in Harry’s shirt again, but the Gryffindor was having none of it. “You have to eat. And sleep. And let your guard down for two fucking minutes.”

“I’ll be all right.”

“You _won’t._ Not if you don’t _rest._ ” Sitting up, he pulled Draco up with him and turned his face fully into the light so he could study it. What he saw brought rage and pain up in his throat to choke him.

His dragon looked as if he’d been dying by slow inches for weeks, instead of partying in his parent’s gracious mansion. His skin was grey-tinged and nearly transparent, his bones showing starkly beneath it, his cheeks and temples sunken into purple hollows. A permanent frown pulled down the corners of his mouth and cut new lines into his face. Even his gorgeous, silver-gilt, angel’s hair looked oddly lifeless, as if his dying body were sucking the vitality out of it in a desperate bid to save itself. But worst of all were his eyes. Harry flinched when he looked into them, shocked by the depth of suffering he saw beneath the dulled silver.

He’d known it. When the letters stopped coming and the silence grew, he’d known it. Something soul-killing had happened to his dragon in that place—that chamber of horrors he called home—and Harry had failed to protect him from it. He should never have listened to Ron and Hermione when they told him he was overreacting, never hesitated, but jumped on a broom and flown to Draco’s rescue. Because _he had fucking known!_

His arms tightened, drawing the other boy close again, then slipped around him. His bones felt shockingly fragile, as if Harry could crush him with one squeeze, and he was suddenly afraid to see what was under those school robes.

“You’re safe here,” he murmured into the top of Draco’s bowed head. “He can’t touch you here.”

Draco gave a sob of laughter and whispered, almost too low for Harry to hear, “That’s what you think.”

“What do mean?” Draco said nothing, just clung a little more tightly to him, and Harry grabbed his shoulders to shove him away. “Draco? What do you mean.” Still the Slytherin kept his head down, avoiding his eyes, and Harry felt his ever-simmering temper rise. “What did he _do to you?!_ ”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Did he give you the Mark? Is that it?!”

Before Draco could answer, Harry grabbed his left arm and pushed up his sleeve. To his relief, there was no tattoo on Draco’s arm, but he did see the tip of an angry scar peering out from beneath his cuff. Straightening his elbow, he shoved the sleeve further up to expose an ugly gash on Draco’s forearm, only just beginning to heal. It had obviously been made more by tearing than cutting and was edged with mottled black and green bruises.

“ _Bloody hell_ ,” he breathed, horror twisting in his guts. “Who did that?”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s healing.” Draco tried to draw his arm away, but Harry refused to let him go.

“Of course it fucking matters! Who did that, Draco? _What_ did that?”

Draco swallowed painfully and let his eyes slide away from Harry’s. “Greyback.”

“What’s a Greyback?”

“Fenrir Greyback. He’s a werewolf.”

Harry felt his heart falter at those words. He stared at Draco, his mouth open, the breath caught in his throat. He knew that he should be swearing and screaming. Or grabbing Draco and hauling him off to Dumbledore as the only person in their world who stood a chance of helping him. Or, at the very least, taking him in his arms and vowing to love and protect him forever, whatever came next. But all he could do was sit there, gaping, unstrung by shock, until Draco spoke again.

“He didn’t turn me. It wasn’t a full moon, and he used his nails, not his teeth. This,” he looked down at the scar for a moment, then pulled his sleeve down over it, “is the only bad one. The others are fading.”

“What others?” Harry asked in a voiceless whisper.

Draco looked at him with dark, wounded eyes, then turned away and slipped out of his robe. He wore a white button-down shirt beneath it that he pulled from his waistband and off over his head in one move. The candlelight fell on his back, showing Harry a network of what could only be claw marks criss-crossing the white skin.

Harry choked back a cry and reached out to touch one red mark. Draco flinched but didn’t pull away, so he stroked his finger the length of the fresh scar, then moved to another and another. They were smooth to the touch, and a few of the smaller ones were already turning pink, but Harry could still see the pattern of clawed fingers tearing and scrabbling at his back. Stroking his hand down Draco’s spine to rest at the small of his back, Harry leaned forward to brush a kiss to the highest scar.

Draco gave a little sob and let his head drop forward, baring his back and neck to Harry. The Gryffindor slipped his arms around his waist and drew him close, pressing his lips to the spot where Draco’s white-blond hair curled slightly at the nape of his neck. Then Harry settled him back against his own chest and bent to whisper in his ear.

“Who did this to you, Dragon? Who gave you to a werewolf?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Draco was twisting and flexing his right hand in an odd way, as if it hurt, but he didn’t seem to realize he was doing it.

“It was your father, wasn’t it? That’s why you won’t say?”

“No!” Draco tried to pull away, but Harry held him with firm, gentle arms that refused to let him go. “It wasn’t! It wasn’t.” He was crying—silently as always—and tears dripped from his chin to fall on Harry’s arm. He began to knead the palm of his right hand with his left.

“But he let it happen, didn’t he?”

“I can’t talk about it.”

“Dragon, you don’t have to let them hurt you like this! You can fight them! _I_ can fight them! You just have to tell me…”

“No, I can’t. It isn’t safe. Please, Harry,” he twisted in the taller boy’s arms, turning to face him and wrapping his own arms around his waist. The face he lifted to Harry’s was streaked with tears and contorted with pain, but his voice was firm when he said, “I just want to sleep. Will you stay here with me? Hold me while I sleep? It… it helps.”

“Of course I will.”

Grabbing his wand once more, Harry banished their clothing, then he tugged the blankets down to give Draco room to crawl under them. Once they were snuggled in a cocoon of heavy quilts and a strong warming spell, Harry gathered the Slytherin up in his arms again and pulled him close. Draco settled his head into the hollow of Harry’s shoulder with a tiny, grateful sigh. By the time Harry had extinguished the candle and tucked the quilt up around Draco’s chin, he was asleep.

 

*** *** ***

 

The next morning, bolstered by a full night’s sleep and a breakfast brought to their little room by Dobby, Draco returned to the Slytherin dungeon. Harry protested. He wanted him to take another day, rest and recharge in the safety of their broom closet, but Draco didn’t see the point. One more day wouldn’t magically heal him from weeks of exhaustion, and the longer he stayed in hiding, the harder it would be to explain his absence. So he waited until the rest of the student body were in the Great Hall, shouldered his bag, and trudged down to the dungeons.

He found his class schedule for the new term lying in the middle of his neatly-made bed. Transfiguration was his first class of the day. Good. He liked Transfiguration and it came easily to him, so he wouldn’t have to concentrate too hard.

He had time to unpack his belongings, clean himself up with a spell, and put on fresh robes before the others returned. He’d prepared a plausible excuse for his late arrival but no one asked. Not even Crabbe or Goyle, which surprised him. They trooped into the dormitory, muttering to each other in their usual semi-intelligible grunts, and broke stride when they saw Draco standing by his bed. Vince blinked at him. Greg nodded and turned away. Then they began rummaging through their trunks for the books they needed, resuming their conversation and paying no more heed to Draco.

He watched them for a moment, baffled by their behavior, then shrugged and went out into the common room where he found most of his housemates. Pansy and Millicent were giggling together, as usual, but Pansy broke off long enough to give him a pointed glare. Considering that the last words he’d spoken to her on Christas Eve were “bitch” and “pissed out of your mind”, he couldn’t really blame her, but Pansy was usually more interested in cuddling up to the Malfoy heir and Crown Prince of Slytherin House than in holding grudges.

He turned from her to the rest of his friends and was both surprised and unsettled by their greetings. No one was precisely rude, but they were definitely cool. He received nods, hellos, a condescending smile from Zabini, but none of the fawning attention he was used to. Some corner of his brain found this troubling, not because he wanted the attention, but because he knew it meant something that he was simply too exhausted to sort out. Filing it away to think about later, he grabbed his book bag and headed for class.

NEWT-level Transfiguration was one of Draco’s favorite classes, even if it was full of Gryffindors and every one of them seemed to find his appearance remarkable that morning. Where the Slytherins had ignored him, the Gryffindors gawked, half a dozen heads turning to stare as he walked into the room. Thomas and Patil smirked at each other and started whispering. Potter gave him his best stony, ‘I know you’re up to something, Draco Sodding Malfoy’ look and dropped his eyes to his book. Granger frowned in concern, caught his eye, then flushed and looked away. Weasel just scowled and gnawed his lip.

In what was probably the oddest moment of that odd morning, it was Neville Longbottom, of all people, who actually spoke to him. “Are you all right, Malfoy?” he said in a distinctly nervous way. “Only, you weren’t at breakfast and you look kind of… umm…”

Draco tried to keep the snark out of his voice when he said, “Devastatingly gorgeous? Nice of you to notice, Longbottom.”

Neville flushed and grinned at that, which set a seal on the strangeness of Draco’s day. “Yeah, that’s it.”

Hermione goggled at her housemate. Ron threw a wad of parchment at him. Draco just shook his head, at a loss for words, then sat down and tried to concentrate on what McGonagall was saying.

 

*** *** ***

 

The change in atmosphere of the Slytherin common room became more and more obvious to Draco as the days passed. Slytherins were, as a breed, finely attuned to the nuances of power and position. They bartered favors for influence as naturally as they breathed, and they knew almost instinctively whom to cultivate and whom to cut. For all of his years at Hogwarts, Draco had held the top position in the House hierarchy, even when he was a snippy, little First Year with more arrogance than sense. His money, his family, his father’s power, his easy dropping of names that made his less privileged housemates’ blood run cold—all of these things guaranteed his supremacy.

Now Draco’s finely-tuned Slytherin instincts were telling him that his position had changed. Groups didn’t open to draw him in the moment he appeared. Conversations flourished without him, no one stopping to ask his opinion or seek his approval. His faithful bodyguards sometimes remembered other obligations that kept them from shadowing him through the halls. Even the youngest Slytherins had caught on, failing to step out of his way when he crossed the room or automatically surrender a chair close to the common room fire.

This wasn’t a problem for him in practical terms. He spent almost no time in the Slytherin dungeon, choosing to study in the library or the broom closet and to sleep in the big bed he shared with Harry, even when the Gryffindor couldn’t join him there. It was no great hardship to step around a group of First Years playing Exploding Snap on the floor or to walk the castle corridors without a hulking, great pair of goons beside him. He couldn’t really even object when he caught a faint sneer thrown in his direction, given what he knew about himself and his family.

The problem was that _they_ didn’t know. Or they shouldn’t. So what had caused his fall from grace?

It couldn’t be his father’s arrest and subsequent humiliation by the Dark Lord, since this had happened months ago and had not affected his standing at the time. It couldn’t be his rumored romance with a non-Slytherin, since that had been going on for more than a year. It had to be something new. Something they had learned over the hols that changed how they looked at their erstwhile prince. But what?

Draco pondered this question for several days before he mentioned it to Harry. They were sitting around Hagrid’s table with Ron and Hermione, enjoying a cup of tea and a plate of inedible scones. Draco had said almost nothing since arriving at the hut, and the Gryffindors were shooting him frowning looks while he brooded over his tea. Finally Hermione took the bull by the horns and asked, “What’s the matter with you today, Malfoy?”

He looked up with arched brows and a supercilious smirk on his face that fooled none of them. They all knew him too well by now.

“You’re sulking,” she said severely.

“Malfoys don’t sulk,” he retorted out of habit.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve got sulking down to an art form. Just tell us what’s wrong.”

He opened his mouth to deliver another pointless bit of snark, then thought better of it and said, “I think the Slytherins know about us. Me and Harry, I mean.”

Harry turned an appalled look on him and nearly shouted, “ _What?_ ”

“It’s not a difficult concept,” Draco retorted sourly.

“But… they can’t… I mean…”

“Why do you think so?” Hermione interjected, stemming the tide of Harry’s eloquence.

“They’re acting strangely.”

“More strangely than usual?” Ron asked, unable to control the urge to poke fun at the Slytherins, though he recognized the seriousness of the situation as well as the others did.

“They’re acting like they know something,” Draco clarified.

That wasn’t much of an explanation, but he really couldn’t face the monumental task ofeducating Gryffindors on the convoluted internal politics of Slytherins.

They looked blankly at him, so he added helpfully, “Something that makes me… vulnerable.”

Harry’s shock erupted into fear-edged anger. He twisted in his chair to face Draco and grabbed his hand, squeezing a little too tightly for comfort. “Have they threatened you?! _Hurt_ you?! If one of those filthy snakes has laid a finger on…”

“No. No threats, no violence, just…” How could he say it? How could he tell these pathologically honorable and decent Gryffindors that he was no longer the Supreme Leader of the Junior Death Eaters? “…sending the message that they _could_ hurt me, if they wanted to.”

“And you think it’s because they know about us,” Harry growled, while his hand clutched fiercely at Draco’s under the table.

Draco nodded.

“But no one’s actually said anything to you about Harry,” Hermione insisted.

“No.”

“What about you, Harry? Have you seen any sign that the Slytherins, or anyone else, for that matter, has figured it out?”

Harry visibly pushed down his instinctive ‘fight’ reflex—for Harry, there was no ‘flight’ option available—to think about that. Finally, he shook his head. “I haven’t seen anything.”

“You and Weasley are more likely than Harry to hear people talking,” Draco pointed out, “and unlike me, Harry is basically unassailable. All they’d do is talk.”

“Me? Unassailable?” Harry gave a snort of disgust. “Obviously you haven’t been paying attention the last five years.”

“He’s right, Harry. People talk, even insult you to your face, but they’d never dare attack you,” Hermione pointed out.

Draco offered her a wry smile. “I’m the only one stupid enough to do that.”

Hermione smiled back with something like real affection, a sparkle in her eyes that Draco found irresistible. “That’s how I knew you weren’t really a coward, Malfoy, no matter how hard you tried to imitate one.”

“Stupid but courageous, then.”

Hermione laughed and Ron grumbled, “Okay, Hermione, if you’ll stop flirting with Harry’s boyfriend for a minute, we can get back to the Slytherin problem.”

Hermione’s cheeks flushed a charming pink. “I’m not flirting!”

“Then Ferret is flirting with you. Either way, cut it out.”

Turning to Harry, Draco said with a straight face, “She’s pretty when she blushes.”

“Oi!” Ron snatched up a rock-hard scone and threw it at Draco. “What’d I just say?”

Draco batted away the missile with Seeker’s reflexes, then smirked at the seething Gryffindor. “You’re so easy to bait, Weasel. It _almost_ takes the fun out of it.”

Hagrid, who had been mucking about in the back room, feeding some creature hidden in a tub that none of them wanted to investigate any more closely, chose that moment to lumber back into the room. The first words out of his mouth proved that he’d been listening to their conversation and understanding more of its subtleties than any of them would have guessed.

“Sounds ter me like the Slytherins think they’ve got somethin’ ter hold over yeh, Malfoy.”

Draco shrugged uncomfortably and said, “That’s how they operate. How we operate.”

“Yeh figure its you an’ Harry?”

“I did, but Harry hasn’t seen any sign of it.”

“Yeah, well, Harry’s a bit clueless abou’ tha’ stuff, inn’t he?”

“Hey!” Harry protested, but Draco actually laughed. It felt strange after so long, as if his lungs had forgotten how.

“Hermione, now, she’s righ’ clever abou’ people. If anyone’s on ter yeh, she’s the one ter see it.”

“I have to say that I haven’t,” Hermione assured them, “and if anyone knew you two were involved, they wouldn’t be able to keep it to themselves. Pansy Parkinson would be shouting it from the parapets. Besides, how would they find out? No one outside this room knows and we wouldn’t say anything.”

“Well,” Harry ventured, looking uncomfortable, “actually, Neville knows.”

“ _Neville?_ ” Ron demanded. “You told _Neville?_ He hates Malfoy!”

“No, he doesn’t,” Hermione said. “Haven’t you noticed? He’s been positively civil lately.”

“Still. That’s a bad security leak, mate. Why’d you tell him?”

“I didn’t. He saw us that day in Greenhouse Three, when the Devil’s Snare tried to eat Draco, and he sort of… figured it out.”

“It wasn’t Longbottom.” To the surprise of the Gryffindors, it was Draco who said it. They all turned to stare at him, and he shrugged. “He wouldn’t say anything. He’s too much of a Gryffindor to betray one of his friends, even if it means getting back at me.”

“Malfoy’s righ’,” Hagrid rumbled.

“Okay, but if Neville could figure it out, then the Slytherins could.” Ron looked from Harry to Draco. “Or are you thinking that it was one of us who talked?”

“I don’t think anyone talked,” Harry said, “and I don’t think the Slytherins figured it out. I still say that I’d know, if the truth about us was out. The Slytherins wouldn’t just be turning on Draco; they’d be coming after me, too.”

Draco stared at the table top, unconsciously rubbing his right hand with his left. He could swear that he felt the hand burning, even though he knew that if he looked at it, he’d see nothing. No discoloration in the skin, no magical cord wrapped around his wrist and stretching over the back of his hand, no malignant spell pulsing beneath his skin. The spell was invisible, even to him, and the pain was only in his mind. For now.

“Draco?” He started and lifted his eyes to Harry’s troubled face. “You okay?”

“Why is everyone always asking me that?” he snapped.

“Because we’re worried about you, you sodding Slytherin,” Ron snapped back.

Draco let go of his not-burning hand and shoved it into his trouser pocket. “I’m fine.” He got to his feet. “I have to get back to the castle.”

“I’ll come with you,” Harry said, bounding to his feet as well.

“Don’t be stupid, Harry. You can’t be seen with me.”

“I’ve got my invisibility cloak. I’ll put it on when we leave the forest.” Catching Draco’s arm, he pulled him toward the back door, calling over his shoulder, “See you guys at dinner. Thanks for the tea, Hagrid.”

Then he was frogmarching Draco out the door and into the shelter of the Forbidden Forest. Once out of sight of the castle, he leaned back against a convenient tree and drew the Slytherin into his arms. Draco melted against him—he couldn’t help himself—but he kept his head down and his eyes averted from the blazing, green gaze fixed on him.

“Okay, Dragon, talk to me.”

“About what?”

“Whatever is really bothering you.”

“I told you. I’m afraid the Slytherins are onto us and are planning to use it against me.”

“But you swear that they haven’t actually hurt you?”

“I swear.”

“Good.” Harry lifted his head so he could press a kiss to his forehead, then to his eyelids. “Good. For a minute back there, I thought I was going to have to hex someone.”

Draco gave a sob of laughter and sagged against him. “Git.”

“You call a man who loves you enough to take on an entire dungeon full of poisonous snakes a git? Where’s your gratitude?”

“Shut it and kiss me, Potter.”

Harry complied with alacrity. Draco leaned into it, opening his mouth and pushing his tongue into Harry’s mouth. Heat and hunger flared in him, making his belly tighten and his cock stir. Harry was already hard against him, telling him in no uncertain terms how much he enjoyed having Draco in his arms again, and Draco instantly felt a surge of guilt on top of the lust filling him. The combination was faintly sickening. He pulled back, breaking the kiss, and tried to push out of Harry’s arms.

“Don’t. It isn’t safe to do that here,” he mumbled, his hand braced against Harry’s chest.

Harry refused to let him go. “No one can see.” When Draco continued to push against him, determined to break free, he forcibly tightened his hold on the smaller boy and said, frustration edging his voice, “What’s the problem, Draco?”

“We just had a lengthy conversation about how the Slytherins may know about us, and you decide to snog me silly in front of the whole castle?”

“It wasn’t so long ago that you let me shag you up against a tree in this very forest, remember?”

“I remember,” Draco said, dully.

“Then what’s changed? And don’t tell me that you’re afraid of your housemates, because I’m not buying it. If they knew, the whole sodding school would know by now and there’d be stories about us plastered cross the front page of _The Prophet._ It has to be something else.” He freed one hand from around Draco’s waist and lifted it to cradle his face. “Some reason you haven’t let me touch you since we got back from break.”

Guilt rose in a burning tide within him. His chest began to ache, and his throat closed up tight. This time, when he shoved against Harry’s chest, the taller boy let him go, but he caught at Draco’s hand to keep him close. Draco let him cling to his left hand, while he pulled thoughtlessly at his sleeve with his right, dragging it down over his fingers.

“This isn’t about what people might see at all, is it?” Harry insisted. His voice had softened again, losing its edge, but it was insistent. Draco knew that he wasn’t escaping this conversation, no matter how desperately he wanted to. “It’s about something that happened over the hols.”

Draco swallowed painfully and looked away.

“You don’t honestly think I’ll blame you, whatever it is? Bloody Hell, Dragon! I’d have forgiven you for taking the Dark Mark, if you’d come back with one! What could be worse than that? Or worse than what you’re father’s already done to you?”

Draco felt Harry’s hot gaze on his flushed, averted face and wished he had the courage to meet his eyes.

“Is it what Greyback did to you? Did he hurt you so that you can’t… you’re afraid to…” Draco shuddered and tried to tear free of his hand, prompting Harry to pull him back into the curve of his arm. “You don’t ever have to be afraid of me. Or of telling me the truth.”

“I can’t,” Draco whispered.

“Draco, _please!_ I can’t lose you like this! I can’t…” He caught Draco behind the neck and guided him into a fierce, fevered kiss. Draco surrendered for a blissful moment, then tore his mouth away with a sob and buried his face in Harry’s shoulder.

“Don’t, Harry. You don’t know what you’re asking… how dangerous it is…”

“Then _tell me!_ ”

With a final, agonized cry, Draco shoved himself hard away from Harry and staggered back, the heels of his hands pressed to his eyes. “I _can’t!_ It isn’t _safe!_ ”

Harry just stared at him, dumbfounded, as he stumbled toward another tree and sagged against it, his hands now clutching his head, doubled over in pain. The agony of rejecting Harry, of denying his own searing lust, of knowing that he’d injured and angered the only person in this wretched world who actually cared about him was more than he could stand in silence. A low, panting, tortured sound rose in his throat. He tried and failed to swallow it, then gasped as tears began to spill from his eyes, bringing burning shame up in him to mix with all the rest.

He was not even aware that his legs had given out until his knees landed in the dirt and familiar, loving arms closed around him. He cried out again, the sound tearing at his throat, and Harry began to rock him.

“Shh. It’s okay. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” he groaned through clenched teeth, “don’t say that…”

“I am. I shouldn’t have pushed you.” Harry’s lips touched his head, moved in his hair as he murmured, “I won’t do it again.”

Draco’s right hand began to burn and throb, worse than before, and he pulled it up into the wide sleeve of his robe. “Just go… back to the castle. Get away from me.”

“Not a chance. I’m taking you to our room and putting you to bed. Then I’m sending Dobby to you with food and a sleeping potion. Maybe a pain potion, too, if I can get him to bring one.”

“Harry, you c…”

“Don’t say I can’t, because I bloody well can! Shut it, now. Lie still for a few minutes, then we’ll head back.”

 

Harry managed to fit both of them beneath his invisibility cloak by holding Draco so close in his arms that the smaller boy could barely walk without tripping over his feet. They made it to their room without running afoul of trouble, and Harry bundled Draco into bed, accepting no resistance and listening to no arguments. Not that Draco was fighting very hard. He felt better, now that Harry had stopped badgering him and his panic had subsided, but he was still faintly sick and disgustingly weak. He sat numbly on the bed, allowing Harry to pull off his shoes, then obediently lay back so he could pull off his trousers as well. Only when Harry tried to put his pajamas on for him did he rouse himself enough to protest.

“I can do that.” He shoved his arms into the sleeves of the shirt, remarking sourly, but with no real bite to his voice, “Though why you’re putting me to bed when it’s not even dinner time, I don’t know.”

“Don’t be a prat. You can stay up reading or doing homework or whatever. I just need to know that you’re safe in here.”

“It’s not like the castle is a death trap.”

Harry shot him a narrow look. “You’re the one who keeps saying it’s not safe… though what the fuck that means, I still don’t know.”

Draco ducked his head and pulled up his pajama trousers without answering. He didn’t speak again until he’d climbed beneath the blankets and tucked them up around his ribcage. Then he fixed tired, sad, doubtful eyes on his visibly worried lover and asked, “Where are you going?”

“Back to the Tower, then to dinner.”

“Will you be back?” He felt guilty even asking, knowing that he would offer his confused and frustrated lover no more than a few evasive remarks and a warm body to curl up against for the night. Hardly what either of them wanted, but the best he had to offer. And he needed it, needed Harry beside him in bed, so badly that it hurt.

“I have another private lesson with Dumbledore, so I’ll be late.”

Draco just nodded, his failure to ask the obvious question—what did Dumbledore actually _teach_ him in these private lessons?—sitting heavily between them.

Harry gazed at him from beneath lowered brows for a long minute then opened his mouth, but whatever he was going to say was interrupted by the loud _crack_ of Dobby appearing. The elf held a large tray crammed with food, a steaming teapot, and a couple of potion bottles.

“Hello, Harry Potter!” he squeaked happily. “Dobby is bringing what you asked for!”

“Thank you, Dobby. Give it to Draco.”

Draco took the tray from the elf’s hands with a nod of thanks and settled it on the mattress beside him.

“Good night, Harry Potter! Good night, Draco Malfoy!” Dobby chirped. Then, favoring Harry with a twinkling smile, he clicked his fingers and disappeared as loudly and instantly as he had come.

Harry crawled across the mattress to give Draco a kiss and steal a roasted potato off his plate, then he was gone, too. Not quite so expeditiously as Dobby, but just as completely. Draco sighed, loneliness washing over him, then fiercely squelched the feeling when his hand began to burn again. With another sigh, he settled down to eat.

 

* * *

 

The burning in his hand woke him from deep, dreamless sleep. It was very late. The room was dark and cold, but Harry’s body was spooned up close behind his, sharing its warmth. He didn’t remember Harry coming back. He must have been under the influence of Dobby’s sleeping potion. He could still feel its effects in his blurred thoughts and comfortably heavy limbs, but the pain in his hand was stronger, more urgent than any potion.

He pulled the offending member in close to his chest and wrapped it tight in his other hand.

 _I’m working on it,_ he told himself, with all the confidence he could muster. _I’ve got a plan—a marvelous, foolproof plan—I just need to work out a few details._

The burning did not ease.

_I’m so busy, with my NEWTs and everything, it’s hard to get a few minutes to think, but I’m definitely working on it. I’ll be ready to act soon._

 

The pain flared, drawing a hiss from him, and he began to massage the hand.

This was a frightening new development. ’Til now, he’d been able to control the pain and the urgency by giving himself this silent pep-talk, reciting all the ways that he was obeying and fulfilling expectations. He had no idea if the words were important—if they actually reached anyone—but at the very least they reassured him and eased his sense of failure. That had been enough. Until tonight.

 _I’m nearly there_ , he insisted. _I promise._

The burning grew even worse. Draco clutched his hand fiercely to his body and clenched his eyes shut. In the privacy of his head, he thought he could hear another voice, not his own, saying, _Show me. Now._

He sat up with a start and looked around the room, looking for the source of that voice or for some sort of guidance. He saw his own clothing folded neatly on the end of the bed, with his wand sitting atop the pile. Beside it was a similar pile of Harry’s clothing, including the silvery mass of his invisibility cloak.

Before he was even aware of a conscious choice to move, Draco was crawling across the mattress, grabbing his wand, and sliding the cloak out of Harry’s pile.

 _I’m just going to look_ , he told himself, as he spelled open the door and climbed off of the bed. _I won’t do anything… won’t touch it… just look. That will be enough._

Tossing the cloak over his head, he shut the door and crept off down the hallway, silent in his bare feet.

The castle was wrapped in a profound silence, as if every portrait, gargoyle and suit of armor was deeply asleep. Draco had never prowled its hallways this late at night and never under the invisibility cloak. He found it an unnerving, almost surreal experience, as if he’d died in his sleep and come back to haunt the castle as a ghost. When he moved through a swatch of moonlight on the floor and cast no shadow, he shuddered and withdrew into the deepest shadow he could find where he didn’t feel so utterly and horribly _invisible_.

He hurried through the sleeping castle until he reached the Seventh floor and an enormous tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy. Slipping off the cloak—he wasn’t sure this would work for ghosts or invisible people—he closed his eyes and walked three times past a stretch of blank, stone wall. When he opened his eyes again, there was a large, ornate, wooden door in the wall.

Draco opened the door and stepped into the dark, cavernous space beyond it. As the door swung shut, torches sprang to life along the soaring walls to reveal a staggeringly vast collection of discarded objects. They were piled in heaps, stacked into walls, tangled together so inextricably that many could not be identified. The edifices ran back and to either side as far as the eye could see, forming a shabby, random, cobwebbed cityscape of forgotten belongings built up over countless generations. The Room of Hidden Things.

Clutching his wand in his left hand, Draco reflexively pulled the flannel sleeve down over his right hand and started forward into the maze. He knew what he was looking for, though he’d never seen the one that lived in here. Montague, his housemate, had described it to him and he’d seen its mate in Borgin and Burkes, so he was confident that he’d recognize it when he saw it, but it could take him a year just to walk all the twisting pathways between the junk in this endless room.

Luck was with Draco, for once, and a mere half hour later, he found himself standing in front of a tall, wooden cabinet. Excitement and nervousness pulsed through him, and the pain in his hand flared so fiercely that he gasped, “ _Fuck!_ ” before he could stop himself. Balling his hand into a fist, he reached out with the other to open a door.

The cabinet was pitch black inside, so Draco conjured a ball of wandfire and sent it zooming inside. Nothing happened. The ball of blue light hung there, illuminating blank, dusty, slightly splintered wooden panels. Staring at it, Draco wondered what a working Vanishing Cabinet ought to look like inside. Empty, certainly, since anything placed in it would vanish, but scarred? Dirty? _Unimpressive?_

That was the only word he could think of for the piece of furniture in front of him, though he knew that it was a powerful magical object that had trapped and nearly killed one of his classmates a year before. His hand was twitching now, as if trying to reach for the silver knob on the righthand door. He clenched it to his thigh, fighting the urge, and stared hard at the blank interior of the cabinet.

 _I’ll fix it. I’ll find a way,_ he thought, trying once again to fill himself with confidence.

His hand twitched again, more insistently, and he gave in. Reaching out, he stroked his fingertips down the dark wood of the door, feeling the spell in his hand warm at the touch. Suddenly, he wasn’t in pain; he was filled with fierce satisfaction, even pride, and the nearly overwhelming desire to laugh hysterically.

Instead, he jerked his hand away and balled it up again, tucking it into his midriff. The hand continued to tingle with power, unnaturally warm, but the pain did not return. Draco sucked in a deep, grateful breath and used his left hand to banish the wandfire before he shut the cabinet. Then he turned and hurried back out through the maze of objects toward the door.

By the time he reached his room again, Draco was achingly tired and blue with cold. He spelled open the door and crawled onto the bed without removing the invisibility cloak and was turning to reset the locking spell when he heard a voice from the darkness.

“Where’ve you been?”

Draco dragged the cloak off, as Harry lit the candles with a silent flick of his wand. Then the two boys stared at each other. Harry looked half asleep, worried, angry, maybe even a bit suspicious, but he didn’t throw any demands or accusations at Draco, just waited for him to explain.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Draco murmured. “I went for a walk.”

“With my cloak?”

“I didn’t want to get into trouble.” He shrugged uncomfortably and dropped his eyes to the pile of silver fabric in his hands. Then he began to fold it. “But you’re right, I shouldn’t have taken it without asking.”

“I don’t care if you use the cloak. What I don’t like is you disappearing without telling me.”

“I was perfectly safe.” He tried to muster a flash of hostility, just to armor himself against the other boy’s concern. It came out sounding sulky. “I’m not a child, and it’s not like I can get into any trouble in the castle.”

“You forget who you’re talking to,” Harry countered. “I get into trouble every time I step out of my dormitory.”

With a sigh, Draco abandoned his attempt to deflect his lover and crawled across the mattress to join him. “I’m sorry, all right? I was feeling claustrophobic. I think I must’ve had a nightmare, though I don’t remember it.”

“Where did you go?”

It took Draco half a second to decide that the truth—or a much of it as he could risk—would serve him best. “The Room of Hidden Things.”

“The… what?”

“You know. That room on the Seventh floor that you have to conjure when you want it.”

“The Room of Requirement?”

“Is that what it’s called? We always called it the Room of Hidden Things because it’s full of junk.”

“That’s just one of the things it does. You can make it turn into anything you need, even a loo, if Dumbledore is telling the truth. So… Room of Requirement.”

“Right. I get it.” Draco slid under the covers and scrunched down to rest his head on the pillow.

Harry still sat, gazing down at him curiously. “Why’d you go there?”

“It’s private. No one goes there. I’ve never even seen a ghost in it. And you can just kind of… wander around, looking at things.”

A glimmer of a smile showed in Harry’s eyes. “What did you find?”

Another moment of indecision, another choice, and he said evenly, “A Vanishing Cabinet. The one Montague got stuck in last year. I was curious…”

“You didn’t get in it!” Harry protested.

Draco rolled his eyes. “Yes, because I’m that stupid. No, you git, I did not get in it. I just wanted to see what it looks like. I considered trying to send something through it, just to see what would happen, but I don’t really even know what’s _supposed_ to happen. I mean, a wizard can use it to get somewhere—when it’s working—but what if you put, say, an apple in it? Would it disappear without magic to trigger it? Would it go where the wizard goes? And if it did work, if the apple disappeared, how would you know it went to the right place without following it? Because an apple can’t decide to get back in the cabinet and come home.” He gazed up expectantly at Harry. “See?”

Harry broke out in a grin. “Yes, I see. And you decided to ponder the mysteries of an apple in a Vanishing Cabinet at three o’clock in the morning?”

“Like I said, I couldn’t sleep.” He abruptly yawned, and Harry laughed.

“How ‘bout now?”

“Now I think I can. If you join me.”

Harry, bless him, did not take this as an invitation to snog or shag, but as it was intended. Settling back on the pillow, he extinguished the candles and held out one arm for Draco. The Slytherin rolled against him and burrowed his head into its usual place in the hollow of Harry’s shoulder, sighing in pleasure as the other boy’s arm closed around him.

In a minute or two, Harry’s breathing had slowed into sleep. To his own surprise, Draco felt himself drifting off, as well. He snuggled a little closer to Harry, tucking his right hand into the warm space beneath Harry’s arm, and smiled when he felt no pain in it. He’d worry tomorrow about his next step and how he would explain any of this to Harry. For tonight, it was enough to be with his Gryffindor love again and not to be in pain.

 _And anyway,_ he thought, in the last moment before sleep claimed him, _I didn’t lie to him._

 

**_To be continued…_ **


	5. The Trouble with Quidditch

The trouble with Quidditch, as far as Draco was concerned, was that it obsessed the entire school so completely that you couldn’t escape it. The day of the Gryffindor-Ravenclaw match dawned grey and wet, with gusty wind whipping through the stands and making the goal hoops whistle eerily, but did anyone consider cancelling the bloody match? Or at the very least, skipping it and staying by the common room fire with a cup of cocoa? No. Of course not. That would be sane, and no one in the wizarding world was sane about Quidditch.

Even with the wind tearing at their robes and a fitful rain blowing sideways beneath their lopsided brollies, the students were in high spirits as they trudged down the hill toward the pitch. The Gryffindor team whinged a bit, pretending to complain, but Draco could see from the smiles on their faces that they didn’t mean it. Harry was practically bouncing in his eagerness to get on his broom and fly. The bloody idiot. Draco was the only one in the whole, sodding school who actually seemed to feel the cold or resent that he had to sit through a match in it. The knowledge that he was trapped for as long as it took Harry to catch the Snitch and free them all from this durance vile made his internal dialogue even more obscenity-laced than usual.

He had declined to try out for the Slytherin team this year, having zero interest in Quidditch anymore. This had caused some comment among his housemates, but Snape had accepted his decision without a blink and even Harry had not tried to talk him into it. Apparently he looked so sickly that they were afraid he’d be blown of his broom by a stiff breeze. Slytherin wasn’t playing today, anyway, just turning out in force to root for the Ravenclaw team in the hopes that they’d push Gryffindor and Harry Bloody Potter off their pedestal.

Fat fucking chance.

Draco shoved his hands deep into his pockets, buried his chin in his green and silver scarf, and watched Harry’s familiar figure moving down the slope ahead of him through lowered lashes. Pain seared through his hand, forcing him to knot it into a tight fist in his pocket, but he showed no outward reaction. He was getting better at hiding it—resisting the urge to rub the hand, tug on his sleeve, or constantly check the white skin for signs of the power burning so hotly beneath it—but the pain was getting worse. He didn’t know how much longer he could withstand it.

He’d hoped to spend this morning alone in the castle, in the Room of Hidden Things, studying the cabinet and thinking of ways to fix it. Just thinking. Not actually _trying._ That would mean giving in, taking another step down that dark road, putting yet more distance between himself and Harry—between himself and escape. Some part of him knew that there was no escape and that he would have to walk the road eventually, but he hadn’t quite surrendered to the inevitable yet. He just wanted to delay, to deceive, to ease the pressure building inside him and buy himself a little time.

The Quidditch match should have been the perfect opportunity… until he showed his face in the common room that morning and Pansy pounced. She must have been waiting for him, because he barely made it through the door before she was all over him. Pouting, simpering, clinging to his arm and whining in his ear. It was almost as if the last month had not happened and he was still the favored one.

“You’re just in time, Draco. We’re all going.”

“Going where?” he asked, pretending obliviousness, as if he hadn’t just spent the night with the Gryffindor Seeker replaying every training move in his head to the point of obsession. Fucking Quidditch.

“The match, of course!” She slapped his arm a little harder than necessary. “Silly!”

“Ravenclaw’s gonna beat Gryffindor,” Goyle rumbled.

“Fancy that.” Draco tried to detach himself from Pansy, to escape to his dormitory, but she held on like a limpet.

“Urquhart’s been watching the Ravenclaw practices and he says Chang’s in peak condition.”

 _As if Cho Chang could beat Potter in any fucking condition_ , Draco thought, but he kept his face neutral. Almost as if he were interested.

“We’re all going to cheer her on. Including you, _Drakey_ ,” she added, her final, nauseating endearment a clear warning.

“Am I? Well, then, I guess I need my cloak.”

Detaching himself from Pansy’s clutches, he went into the dormitory to dig up his cold weather gear, pretending not to hear Theo Nott mutter to Blaise Zabini, “Guess his slag is a Ravenclaw, or he wouldn’t be so hot to come.”

“It sure as shite isn’t a Gryffindor,” Zabini answered in his most superior drawl.

Draco returned with his cloak, gloves and scarf, then followed his housemates to breakfast. Sitting between Crabbe and Goyle, staring surreptitiously at the Gryffindor table, he could almost convince himself that the world had gone back to normal. For all of five minutes, he wasn’t Harry Potter’s secret lover or Lucius Malfoy’s whore of a son or the Dark Lord’s unwilling pawn or an outcast from his own House. He was Draco Malfoy, pureblood snob and all-round shit, eating breakfast and contemplating the misery he would cause that day. Then his hand started to throb, worse than ever, and reality came crashing back in on him.

Now he was climbing into the stands with Pansy on one side of him and Zabini on the other, preparing to watch Potter destroy the Ravenclaw team. His hand throbbed. A spike of pain went up his arm, as if reaching for his vital organs, and he cried out in spite of himself. Luckily, the teams were coming onto the pitch, and the roar from the crowd drowned out his little slip. Clamping his teeth shut against any further sound and tucking his balled fist beneath his thigh so he could grind it into the bench with his weight, he settled in for the duration.

 

 

It seemed that Fate, or Karma, or the Quidditch Gods were out to get Draco. Harry caught the Snitch, as Draco had known that he would, and Gryffindor won the match, but only by a small margin, which left Slytherin in the lead for the Cup and his housemates in screamingly high spirits. Draco was swept back up to the castle, Pansy latched onto his arm more tightly than ever, into a celebration that promised to last all night. One attempt to detach himself from the mob of shouting, cheering, thoroughly pissed Slytherins ended in Terence Higgs literally pinning him to the floor in front of the fire and Zabini pouring a shot of Firewhiskey down his throat while the usual gang of girls looked on, howling with drunken laughter.

“Give him the whole bottle!” Nott hooted. “Put some hair on his bollocks!”

“Why so worried about my bollocks, Theo? Hoping to cop a feel?” Draco snarled, when he could catch his breath. He threw off Higgs and sat up, coughing and spluttering, then shot a killing glare at Pansy. She was red-faced and snorting with laughter, draped on Millicent’s sturdy shoulder, alcohol quickly eroding the last of her dignity. She pointed a red-clawed finger at Draco’s flushed, disgruntled face and fairly howled with mirth.

Unfortunately, the alcohol was hitting Draco’s system hard, making him reckless, and he forgot to hold his tongue. “If you think hairy bollocks are so brilliant, Pansy, why don’t you show us yours?”

Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “Oh, no, darling. It’s yours they’re all here to see.”

A black tide of panic rose in Draco’s brain, fueled by booze and embarrassment. He lurched to his feet and stared down at her.

“Go on, show us,” she taunted, sounding vicious and not nearly as drunk as he’d thought. “Drop your pants and bend over. Make Theo a happy man. You know you’re aching for it.”

Draco felt as if the floor were tilting out from under him. How could she say it out loud? How could she strip him bare like that? Expose him to all these scavengers who were just waiting for the chance to pounce? She was supposed to be his friend. Even when they fought and insulted each other, she was supposed to have his back…

Then it penetrated his brain what he was seeing—the utter clarity and fierce triumph in her eyes, the malevolence in her smile—and his stomach dropped into his boots.

She knew. Not just that he preferred boys—that was probably not much of a secret by now—but all of it. His father. The men. The things he had to do. Somehow, Pansy knew, which meant…

His slightly glassy gaze swept the faces turned up to him, grinning and laughing and leering in a way that he should have recognized before now, and the fear in his stomach turned to churning sickness. Then pain seared up his arm into his chest. With a gasp he couldn’t quite swallow, he spun away from all those avid faces and headed for the door. He heard voices shouting at him and was vaguely aware that several of his housemates had leaped to their feet to follow him, but he didn’t care. He had to get out, get away, before the spell in his hand exploded and there was nowhere left for him to hide.

Out of the common room, down the dark passage, he half-ran, half-stumbled as fast as his legs would move. Around a corner, then another, then another. Past locked doors and secretive stairways. No destination in mind, just escape, while the agony spread from hand to arm to chest, until it filled his body with liquid fire. He knew what was coming. He’d felt it once before and the threat of it had always lurked in the back of his mind like a festering wound. Now it was happening, and he _had to get away!_

Footsteps pounded on the stone behind him, close enough to keep him in sight, to goad him into flight, but deliberately not catching him. They were hunting him. Herding him. Running him to earth.

The pain was too much, and he staggered to a halt, falling against the wall. He shuddered, cried out, clutched his arm to his midriff and tried to smother the fire in it with his other hand. His head fell back against the stone wall and tears slipped from beneath his lashes.

“Who’re you running to, Malfoy?” a voice sneered from just by his shoulder.

He cracked open his eyes to find most of the Sixth and Seventh Year Slytherin boys crowded around him. They smelled of liquor, sweat and sex. His stomach heaved as he realized that they were getting off on this—driving him through the dungeons like a prey animal. They crowded still closer, and one of them slammed him into the wall with an arm across his chest.

“Who’s been buttering your crumpet, eh? Not one of us, so… a friend of Daddy’s?”

“We know what you’ve been up to,” another growled, “whoring for your father, and we’re right insulted you didn’t give us a turn. We’d’ve paid.”

“Yeah, a Knut or two, anyway!”

Draco moaned and sagged against the restraint of the larger boy’s arm. He heard the words, understood what they meant, but couldn’t focus on them with the agony ever expanding in his body, driving out everything else.

Someone slapped him, rocking his head to the side and setting off fireworks in his eyes. “Pay attention, Malfoy! We’re talking business here!”

“I’m trying!” Draco cried, but not to the boys confronting him. He clawed at the arm holding him, struggling to break free, while his eyes rolled up in his head and he cried again, “Please! _I’m trying!_ ”

Then a voice spoke in his head, cold and implacable. _Not hard enough._ _Crucio!_

Draco screamed. His back arched in agony. His head snapped back to strike the wall.

“Bloody hell!” one boy cursed, and the arm across his chest jerked away.

Draco dropped to the floor between the shuffling feet of his housemates, his body writhing and jerking, his fingers scrabbling until they tore on the stone. He fought for breath only so he could scream again and again and again, while the curse seemed to tear the very fabric of his being into bloody scraps.

“Shut him up!”

A hand clamped over his mouth, trying to stifle the cries echoing through the dungeon passage, but Draco twisted mindlessly away from it, still screaming his endless agony.

“What the _fuck_ … Snape is going to hear!”

“He’ll never believe we didn’t do this!”

“ _Shut him the fuck up!”_

Something struck Draco in the head, making him gasp and try to roll away. The next blow landed at the base of his skull.

“Fucking Malfoy…”

A final blow slammed into his head, bringing darkness.

 

*** *** ***

 

“Have you seen Crookshanks?”

Ron glanced up from the book in his lap, frowning. “Hmm?”

“Crookshanks. I haven’t seen him since before the match.” Hermione looked around the Gryffindor common room. “Have you?”

“No.” He dropped his eyes to the page again, utterly unconcerned with the whereabouts of Hermione’s cat and not about to get dragged into a search through the tower for him.

Hermione, unfortunately, had other ideas. “I’ve checked all the dormitories. He’s not stalking Neville’s toad or sleeping on Lavender’s cashmere jumper.” Her face twisted with worry. “He must have gotten out again.”

Ron sighed and tossed aside his book. So much for getting his homework done. “Yeah, well, what else is new?”

Hermione had on her most woeful expression, the one Ron could never resist, and was gazing at him with pleading eyes that said, ‘I know you love Crookshanks as much as I do and you won’t be able to bear it if anything happens to him down in those terrible, dark, cold dungeons.’

He sighed again, in defeat, and said, “Where’s Harry?”

“I don’t know.”

“So it’s just me then, is it?”

“I’d help but I’m already late for Prefect Duty. I’m supposed to be patrolling the upper floors, and after a Quidditch match things get out of hand so easily…”

 _Fucking Quidditch_ , Ron thought, as he heaved himself to his feet and went to get his wand. _Fucking cat._

 

 

He sidled along the dank, chill corridor, holding his wand up to light his way, peering nervously around each corner and starting at every rustle or scrape that reached his ears. He told himself that he was proceeding carefully so he wouldn't miss Crookshanks in the dark, but the truth was that he couldn't care less about the mangy beast. He was creeping through the Hogwarts dungeons in search of the renegade cat because he could not say no to Hermione, however fervently he wished that he could. And he was stopping for long, agonizing seconds at every corner because he frankly hated the dungeons.

Dark, sinister, filthy places, full of rats, ghosts, Slytherins, and Merlin knew what else. Crookshanks was welcome to them. It would serve the Slytherins right if Hermione's cat ate every toad or rat in their dormitories. And it would serve Crookshanks right if he ran afoul of Snape. Or worse. Unfortunately for Ron's peace of mind, Hermione cared very much what happened to Crookshanks, and she had no intention of allowing Snape to pop him in a potion.

At least once a month, the cat escaped from the Gryffindor common room and slunk down to the dungeons, where he wreaked havoc on the rat population, seriously cheesed off the Slytherins, and brought Snape rampaging up to the Great Hall to demand, in front of all the sniggering Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, that Miss Granger control her pet or risk losing him in some public and painful way. Ron didn't take Snape's threats seriously, and he had boundless faith in Crookshanks' ability to preserve his own skin, but Hermione was convinced that her beloved cat would be in peril of his life if he were caught on the prowl again. So here he was, creeping about in the dark, chasing a flea-bitten feline. Mad. The whole thing was mad.

Rounding yet another corner to peer down yet another dark passageway, Ron quietly cursed Hermione, the Slytherins, and all animals in general. Then he added Harry to the list, just for good measure, because his best mate, Harry Potter, the Boy Who Bloody Lived, had skived off to Merlin-knew-where and left Ron at Hermione's mercy. Harry _knew_ Ron had no natural defenses against a girl in distress. And Hermione was no ordinary girl. She was ruthless.

He hesitated at a branch in the corridor, looking either way for some clue as to which way he should go. A soft squeaking came from the left-hand turning, and Ron started toward it. Crookshanks didn't make noises like that—Crookshanks didn't make any noise at all when he was stalking the dungeons—but where mice, rats and other squeaking things lived, there Crookshanks hunted. Then he heard the yowl.

It was a sharp sound. Insistent, but not distressed. The kind of sound Crookshanks made when he’d found something that demanded instant attention from the oblivious humans that cluttered his environment. Ron picked up his pace and hurried down the passage toward the sound.

He came around a corner, wand held out to light his way, to see the huge, scruffy, orange monster crouched beside a shapeless bundle at the base of the wall. The cat looked up, its yellow eyes catching the light from his wand, and uttered another yowl. Ron broke stride, gaping at the motionless heap of dark robes and silver-blond hair, then gave a shout and took off running.

“Malfoy! Malfoy!” He skidded to a stop beside the still body, took one look at it, and spun away, his hand pressed to his mouth. “ _Bloody hell_ …!”

Crookshanks yowled again, more softly but no less insistently, forcing Ron shake off his horror and turn back around. Holding up his wand in one shaking hand, he conjured a ball of blue light that illuminated the body at his feet. He gave a little sob and, entirely without his permission, tears began to spill from his eyes.

Ron had seen a lot of blood and violence in his years at Hogwarts—being Harry’s best mate guaranteed that—but something about this was different. The broken angle of Malfoy’s head against the stone floor. The blood pumping sluggishly from a wound hidden beneath his clumped and sticky hair. The way his hand lay curled beside him, like a sleeping child’s but the fingers fouled with yet more black, clotted blood. This wasn’t the aftermath of battle. This was violence done in the dark. Cruel and deliberate.

None of these words came to Ron in that moment, but he felt them, down in his gut, and his tears quickened. He sank to his knees beside his unconscious friend, staring at him through a haze of tears, hunting for inspiration but finding only silence and a staring cat.

He had to get Malfoy out of here, but how? Who could he reach in time? Who could he _trust?_ Harry and Hermione were somewhere in the upper castle. Same for Dumbledore, McGonagall and Pomfrey. By the time he found any of them, Malfoy could be dead. But the only people in these miserable dungeons were Slytherins, and no one in his right mind would trust a Slytherin, especially when they had probably done this.

Then it came to him in a flash and he laughed out loud at his own stupidity. “Hang on, Ferret! I’m going for help!” Lurching to his feet, he pointed his wand at the unconscious boy and bellowed, “ _Protego!_ ”

Sparkling light poured from his wand to form a shield around Malfoy’s body and the stoic Crookshanks.

“Stay with him,” he told the cat. “Don’t let anyone touch him. I’ll be right back.”

Ron ran full tilt through the dungeons, still crying though he didn’t know why. He had not marked his path and urgency made him frantic, so he took more than one wrong turn and was sobbing in frustration by the time he reached a hallway he recognized. It was the one with the entrance to the Slytherin common room—not where he wanted to be but at least he wasn’t lost. He spun around and started back the way he’d come.

Two minutes later, he stood outside of Snape’s office, breathing hard. Not stopping to consider what he would do if the Potions Master wasn’t actually here, he pounded his fist on the door.

Nothing.

Gritting his teeth, he pounded again, more loudly, and called, “Professor Snape! Professor, _please!_ I _need you!_ ”

The latch scraped, then the door swung ponderously inward. Snape stood just inside, glaring fiercely at Ron with his habitual sneer twisting his face.

“Weasley.” His black eyes narrowed dangerously. “What’s this about?”

Ron took a gasping breath and cried, “I need your help, Professor! Back there…” he waved vaguely at the hallway, “in the dungeons… He’s hurt!”

Snape’s fierce gaze took in his tear-slicked face, running nose and heaving chest. His face betrayed nothing, but Ron sensed that he was thinking. Weighing probabilities. “If this is some kind of prank, I’ll see that you spend the rest of the year in Detention, Weasley.”

“It’s not a prank, Professor. It’s Malfoy.”

Snape stiffened at that and stepped out of the office to loom over the trembling student. “What did you say?” he hissed.

“Malfoy. Hurt. In the dungeons. _Please,_ Professor, will you just come?”

The Potions Master gave him one more pointed glare, one more moment to squirm, then waved his hand in a signal to go. Ron sprang away from him, as if released from a body bind curse, and took off down the hallway with Snape flapping after him. He slowed down at the second turning, realizing that he wasn’t entirely sure which way to go, and Snape caught him up. After a slight hesitation, Ron turned to his right and led the way into the darkness.

“What are you doing down here, anyway, Weasley?” Snape asked, as they strode down yet another hallway, shoulder to shoulder.

“Looking for Hermione’s bloody cat,” Ron said bitterly.

“That hideous, orange creature that devours everything in sight?”

“Yeah.” Then, on an irrational impulse to defend the beast, simply because it was Snape insulting him, he added, “It was Crookshanks who found Malfoy. He’s very smart for a cat, even if he is kind of a… hideous creature.”

Snape just grunted and picked up his pace, forcing Ron to sprint a few paces to keep up with him. They reached yet another branch in the passage that Ron did not recognize and stopped. Snape threw a glare at him, silently demanding that he choose, but Ron did not have the faintest clue which way to go. Then he remembered his own words to Snape about Crookshanks and got a wild idea.

Gulping in nervousness, he called, “Oi! Crookshanks!”

Snape gave him a withering look, but then they both heard, quiet clearly, the cat yowling. Ron grinned and turned toward the sound, running once more as relief filled him. They came around a corner to see the shield spell glimmering softly in the dark corridor and, just visible through it, the enormous orange cat sitting next to Malfoy’s body. Ron waved his wand as he ran, banishing the spell, and Snape darted past him to reach his student. Dropping to his knees beside Snape, Ron bent over Malfoy.

“Ferret?” Snape shot him another narrow look but didn’t comment on his choice of nickname. “He’s still breathing,” Ron said, relieved. Then he turned to Crookshanks and said, “Good job, mate.”

“I hardly think the cat kept him breathing.”

“He got us here, didn’t he?” Ron shot back. Crookshanks began to lick his paw with studied smugness.

“Hmmph.” Snape had his wand out and was running it back and forth, a few inches above Malfoy’s body. “Did you touch him?”

“No. I thought… It looks like he’s broken something.” Ron gulped again. “Broken his neck.”

“I don’t believe so, but you did the right thing.” Then he added, as if afraid that his words had been too complimentary, “For once in your pathetic excuse for a life.”

Ron accepted this without a blink, used to Snape’s constant verbal abuse. “What do we do?”

“I’ll get him to the hospital wing. You find Dumbledore. And Potter.”

“Wha…?” Ron gasped, caught in the act of jumping to his feet and nearly toppling over in shock. “Wh-what do you want with Harry? You don’t think he…”

Snape turned his most scathing look on Ron, who flushed to the roots of his hair, and said in a voice that dripped with acid, “Contrary to what you may believe, I am not irretrievably stupid. Neither is the Headmaster.” When Ron just stared at him, dumbfounded, he went on, “Did you honestly think that Potter and Malfoy could sleep in the same bed every night—after creating their own room for the purpose—and we wouldn’t know about it?”

“Uhhm…”

“Malfoy will want to see Potter when he wakes up, and The Boy Who Lived will relish the chance to play the ministering hero. Go find them, Weasley. Now.” He got to his feet and pointed his wand at Malfoy. “Start with Dumbledore. Ask him to meet me in the hospital wing.”

“Uhh…”

“Have you gone lame, as well as brain-dead? _Go!_ ”

“The, uhh, password, Professor? To get past the gargoyle?”

Snape huffed and growled, “Nosebleed Nougat.”

Ron nodded and, without waiting for further insults, bolted down the passage.

 

**_To be continued…_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a good reason for doing this to Draco. I promise. I'm not just torturing him for the sake of being mean. Just bear with me...


	6. Slytherin Pox

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gave me absolute fits. I'm still not sure I got it right, but after the sixth or seventh massive rewrite, I decided I had to commit and just publish it already.
> 
> It contains references to rape, prostitution, physical and emotional abuse and violence. Proceed with caution if this is a problem for you.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it! Please let me know what you think of the story so far.

 

“Fucking Quidditch,” Harry muttered bitterly.

“Oi. You _love_ Quidditch.”

Harry glanced up from the lifeless face of the boy in the bed to meet Ron’s eyes. He didn’t know how bad his own face looked, but he guessed it was something like his friend’s—pale and blotchy, slightly swollen with tears and twisted with the effort to control them. He scowled at this visible reflection of his own pain and helplessness. It was nice that Ron cared so much. It sucked that Harry had to see it.

They sat together at Draco’s bedside—Harry perched on the edge of the mattress, Ron slumped in a chair beside it—keeping watch over him. Draco was still dressed in his school robes, lying curled on his side with his head twisted at a painful angle so that his face was turned up to the ceiling. Blood pulsed steadily from a wound hidden beneath his hair and stained the fingers that Harry held so protectively to his chest. Bruises bloomed across his ghastly white cheek, clearly visible even beneath the fresh blood that painted it.

His huddled, broken posture and the unnatural angle of his head made Harry’s throat ache with fresh tears. He longed to straighten Draco’s limbs, settle him comfortably against the pillow, staunch the bleeding from his head wound—all the things Madam Pomfrey should have done but, inexplicably, hadn’t. Only the nurse’s strict orders to do nothing but hold Malfoy’s hand and talk to him kept Harry in his seat now.

 _Nothing_ , she had repeated, eyeing him beadily as she swept Dumbledore and Snape around the screens that hid the bed.

Harry had immediately rebelled by combing the hair back from Draco’s forehead and planting a kiss between his brows. He’d done it as a gesture of defiance, but once he’d touched the other boy, he couldn’t stop, placing kisses on his closed eyes, his lips, his cheeks, his knuckles, until his own lips were smeared with blood and wet with tears.

His defiant anger burnt out, he now sat brooding over what his own mistakes had wrought. _Fucking Quidditch._

“I should’ve been with Draco instead of playing that stupid match,” he insisted in answer to Ron’s attempt to soothe him.

“It didn’t happen during the match. He was there with all the other Slytherins, in the stands. I saw him.” Ron sighed and slumped back in his chair. “You can’t make this your fault, Harry. You didn’t know…”

“He tried to tell me. Tried to tell all of us. Remember that day at Hagrid’s?”

Ron stared down at the boy in the bed, gnawing his lip. “You think it was the Slytherins.”

“Who else?”

“I thought so, too, when I found him. But Pomfrey said… the Cruciatus Curse…” He gulped and lifted wide, haunted eyes to Harry’s face. “Even the Slytherins wouldn’t do that, would they? To another student? A _friend?_ ”

Harry understood why he didn’t want to believe it. The idea that Draco’s housemates had used an Unforgivable Curse on him was horrific. But if they hadn’t, then who had? A teacher? That thought was even worse. A stranger? No one could get through Dumbledore’s wards.

 _It isn’t safe._ How many times had Draco said those words to him? And how many times had he refused to believe it? _It isn’t safe._

Harry shuddered and lifted Draco’s hand to press a kiss to it. The cold fingers clasped so tightly in his did not move. “Why isn’t he waking up?”

“He took a pretty bad blow to the head.”

“Madam Pomfrey could _Rennervate_ him, if she wanted…”

“No, Potter, I could not.” Harry twisted round to see Pomfrey standing in the gap in the screen, looking dour and disapproving. “Not without doing even more damage. You and Weasley need to clear out so I can work.”

“I’m staying with Draco,” Harry said, stubbornly.

“You will do as you’re told. Both of you. Out.” Harry and Ron got reluctantly to their feet. “The Headmaster wants a word with you.”

Ron sloped toward the exit, but Harry clung doggedly to Draco’s hand and bent over him.

“I won’t go far, Dragon.” He pushed the hair back from Draco’s forehead, exposing the wicked gash on his hairline, and kissed him. “I promise. Just call if you need me.”

Another kiss on his forehead, then his lips, and Harry could feel the nurse’s impatient glare boring a hole in his back. He straightened up with a sigh.

“I want to be here when he wakes up.”

“That won’t be for some time.” Her face softened. “Go on, Potter. I’ll look after him.”

Out of excuses to stay, Harry did as he was told.

On the main ward, he found Ron, Dumbledore and Snape standing with two unexpected visitors. One was a young woman with bubble-gum pink hair, the other a tall dark-skinned man. Both wore the sweeping burgundy robes of an Auror.

Harry halted in surprise, his mouth dropping open, until the man turned to smile at him.

“Kingsley?!”

“ _Auror Shacklebolt_ is here on official Ministry business,” Snape growled, but Kingsley waved that away and stepped forward with his hand out.

“Never mind the formalities. I’m here to help. How are you, Harry?”

“Umm, all right, I guess,” Harry replied, as he shook the offered hand. His eyes jumped to the other Auror. “Hallo, Tonks.”

She did not give him her usual grin, wink and cheerful ‘Wotcher, Harry!’ She merely nodded, her face unnaturally solemn.

“You’re here because of Draco?”

All traces of a smile left Kingsley’s handsome face. “The use of an Unforgivable Curse requires investigation by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”

Harry’s mouth went dry. “So… you have to report this to the Ministry.”

Kingsley nodded. “Of course.”

“Which means, Lucius Malfoy will find out.”

“We can’t keep this from Draco’s parents,” Dumbledore said. “I’ll notify them when Madam Pomfrey has finished her examination and we have more information.”

“You can’t do that!”

“I don’t have a choice, Harry. Draco is underage.”

“But his father is…” Harry abruptly bit off his words and flushed a burning red.

Dumbledore cocked his head, fixing Harry with piercing, blue eyes that seemed to bore holes in his skull. “His father is what?”

The question was soft and dangerous. It set warning bells going off in Harry’s head, and he fumbled for a safe answer. “A complete and utter bastard.”

Tonks snorted.

Dumbledore gave Harry a smile that told him the old wizard wasn’t fooled for an instant. He knew that Harry had censored himself. “Be that as it may, he’s Draco’s father. I’m obligated to tell him what happened to his son.”

“Albus?” They all turned to see Madam Pomfrey standing by the screen. “I’d hold off on telling anyone, just yet.”

Dumbledore’s brows snapped together, even as Harry felt his own stomach turn over in mingled horror and relief. “What’s the problem, Poppy?”

Her eyes cut over to Harry and her face tightened. “I need to speak to you and Auror Shacklebolt. Privately.”

“Ah. Very well.”

Harry opened his mouth to insist, yet again, that he wanted to stay with Draco, but Kingsley stepped in before he could get the words out. “Tonks, take Weasley down to the dungeons and have him show you where he found Malfoy. You can take his statement, as well.”

“Right. Come on, then, Ron.”

Ron threw a helpless look at Harry but didn’t resist when Tonks caught him by the arm and marched him toward the exit.

“Harry, I’ll need to speak with you when I’m done here.”

“You can wait in Madam Pomfrey’s office,” Dumbledore said, pointing toward a door at the back of the ward. “Go on, my boy. Make yourself comfortable and we’ll be with you shortly.”

Harry, awash in too many conflicting emotions to sort out at the moment, simply nodded and trudged down the ward toward the office. Once inside, he looked around in some curiosity.

He’d had never been in this room before. It was a combination office, sitting room, Potions cupboard and storeroom. The armchairs looked as if they’d come from the Gryffindor common room, complete with worn red and gold upholstery and stuffing poking out of the cushions. The desk was piled so deep in books, magazines, parchment and general detritus that its top was completely obscured. The walls were crammed with countless shelves and cupboards full of bandages, bottles, strange devices and miscellaneous belongings left in the hospital wing by students over the centuries. The coffee table that stood between the chairs was strewn with issues of Witch Weekly, tatty novels, and the remains of the afternoon tea Madam Pomfrey had abandoned when called to treat Draco.

It felt strange to be in here, among the bits and pieces of a life about which Harry knew so little. Almost as if he were peering into the old nurse’s dreams. He cast another look around, then made his way to the nearest armchair and dropped into it.

The time dragged by with agonizing slowness. Harry sat in the chair, tapping his fingers and staring at the shelves full of undefinable objects—much like the collection in Dumbledore’s office, except that these looked more like Medieval torture devices than kinetic sculptures—until he couldn’t hold still any longer. Then he leapt to his feet and prowled the room like a caged animal. After several minutes of this, he flung himself into the chair again and picked up a magazine from the coffee table. A middle-aged witch with heavily starched blonde hair simpered up at him from the cover. She reminded him uncomfortably of Rita Skeeter, and he quickly dropped the magazine.

The door abruptly opened to admit Dumbledore, Shacklebolt and Pomfrey. Harry came to his feet as if the chair were spring-loaded and started for Pomfrey, demanding, “Is he awake? Can I see him?”

Pomfrey shook her head, her kindly face pulled into somber lines. “He’s still unconscious.”

“That’s not right, is it?” Harry looked frantically from her to Dumbledore and back, seeking reassurance from these two people who had rescued him so many times before. “Shouldn’t he be awake by now?”

“Certainly he _should_ be, but between the head injury, the effects of the Cruciatus Curse, and his weakened physical condition, it’ll be a miracle if he wakes up at all.” Harry gulped and Pomfrey looked at him beadily. “How long has Malfoy been destroying himself?”

“What? He… he isn’t…”

“You didn’t honestly think I wouldn’t notice his appalling condition, did you? He’s undernourished, exhausted, neglecting his appearance… Even his magic is affected. I’m surprised none of his professors have come to you, Albus,” she added, frowning over at Dumbledore, “with the state he’s in. He can’t possibly be performing up to standard in class.”

Harry felt the prickle of tears in his eyes and blinked furiously to hold them back. “He hides in the back,” he muttered, “and I help him with his homework.”

“That’s no excuse!” Pomfrey snapped. “I’m going to have words with Severus about this! That boy should have been in hospital weeks ago!”

“I try to help. I stay with him at night, so he feels safe enough to sleep. I make him eat.”

“But you didn’t think to bring him to me?”

Harry flushed and dropped his eyes. “He wouldn’t come.”

“No, I’m not surprised, considering what else has been going on.” The harshness in her voice brought Harry’s eyes up again. Horror twisted in his guts. “Don’t look at me like that, Potter. I’m not a fool. That young man of yours is showing all the signs of severe physical and emotional trauma, and I don’t have to look far for the cause.”

“Sit down, my boy,” Dumbledore interjected, dragging Harry’s attention from the nurse to where the Headmaster sat in one squashy armchair. Kingsley had appropriated the sofa, leaving the remaining chair for Harry. “We need to talk to you.”

“You don’t think I had anything to do with the attack!” Harry protested, even as he drifted back to the chair and folded himself into it.

“Of course not. But as I’m sure you know, this is about much more than today’s events.”

Harry looked around at the circle of grim faces confronting him and had to swallow twice before he could speak. “You don’t think I… did those other things to Draco, either, do you?”

Madam Pomfrey gave a derisive snort. She crossed her arms and stared down her nose at him. “Don’t be daft. I know you, Harry Potter, and I know you could never harm another human being that way, especially not someone you care about.”

“I do care about him. I want to help him. I just… don’t know how.”

“Talk to us, Harry.” Dumbledore fixed him with his most piercing gaze. “Give us the power to help.”

“I can’t. Draco would never forgive me.”

“Even if it means saving his life?”

Frustration and fear rose in Harry’s throat, choking him. His eyes prickled with tears again. “You think I don’t know what this is doing to him? That it’s killing him? Of course I bloody well know! I have to sit there and _watch it!_ ”

“Then stop watching and do something about it. Tell us who is sexually abusing him.”

Harry flinched at those blunt words and bit his lip. “Ask Draco.”

“He’s unconscious, and we can’t afford to wait for him to wake up. It’s up to you to tell us, Harry.”

“ _I can’t!_ ”

Dumbledore sighed and gave Harry a look of understanding that only made him feel worse. “Let’s be frank with one another, shall we?”

Harry nodded warily.

“Draco is in dire trouble. We all know this and we all want to help, but we’re running out of time.”

“Why?” Harry asked, in a soundless whisper.

“Because I am required by law to report the use of an Unforgivable Curse to the Ministry and to notify the parents of an underage wizard when he is seriously injured while under my care.”

“You can’t tell his parents,” Harry rasped out.

“You said that before, but you gave me no reason for it. And Harry,” the old wizard leaned forward, bringing his compelling presence even closer, “if I am going to defy the Ministry, risk dismissal or prison for myself and the people who stand with me, I need a reason.”

There it was. The bald truth staring him in the face. He could save Draco from his parents but only by breaking his trust.

He was _so utterly fucked._

“Kingsley is an old and trusted friend,” Dumbledore went on in that same persuasive tone. “He has agreed to investigate the attack without sending an immediate report to his superiors, but he can’t delay for long. Just as I cannot delay notifying the Malfoys for long. We must find out who hurt Draco and why, before the fact of the attack gets out and we lose control of the situation.”

No one spoke for a long, dreadful minute. Harry sat with hunched shoulders, his hands clenched together in his lap, staring at the Rita Skeeter clone on the magazine cover through a sheen of unshed tears. He understood every word Dumbledore had said. He believed it. He knew he had no choice. But every cell in his body screamed in protest at the thought of actually saying the words and betraying Draco. Once it was done, he could never go back.

 _I’m sorry, Dragon_ , he thought. _I can’t let this go on. I can’t watch you suffer anymore._

Pulling his shoulders up straight, he looked into Dumbledore’s familiar, blue eyes and said, “It’s his father.”

A flicker of disgust passed over Dumbledore’s features, and Madam Pomfrey audibly gasped.

“Lucius Malfoy is raping his own _son?_ ” she choked out.

“No. At least… I don’t think so. He’s forcing Draco to… have sex with men.”

“ _Merciful heaven_ ,” Pomfrey breathed.

“Why would he do such a thing?” Dumbledore asked with preternatural calm.

“Draco says it’s for political favors. His father is using him as… as payment.” Bracing himself, Harry forced out the rest of it, determined to be thorough if he had to do it at all. “He says he agreed to it, that they didn’t force him, but I know he only agreed because he’s afraid. He thinks he has no choice.”

“What is he afraid of?”

Tears were streaming down Harry’s cheeks now, but he ignored them. “His father. The Death Eaters. Voldemort. He’s afraid that Voldemort is giving the orders, and if he refuses, his family will suffer for it. And there’s…”

When he broke off, at a loss to explain, Dumbledore prompted quietly, “Go on.”

“There’s something else. Something that frightens him so much he won’t talk about it. He just says it isn’t safe.”

Dumbledore just gazed at him for a long minute, digesting his words, then asked, “When did all this start?”

“The business with his father was this summer. The other thing was over the Christmas hols.”

“Is that when he got those scars on his back?” Pomfrey asked.

Harry nodded.

“Did he tell you how it happened?”

“I can’t…”

“Potter, you won’t help him by keeping things from us, now. We know he’s being abused and tortured. If we know how and by whom, maybe we can stop it.”

Drawing in a shaking breath, he murmured, “It was someone called Greyback. Fenrir Greyback.”

Madam Pomfrey hissed in pain. Kingsley looked as if he might be sick. Dumbledore regarded Harry thoughtfully.

“I’m acquainted with Greyback, and I can easily believe that he’s responsible for the wounds I saw. I gather, since we’ve had a full moon recently and no reports of a werewolf in the castle, that he did not bite Mr. Malfoy.”

“He didn’t,” Harry agreed quietly.

“Well, that’s something,” Dumbledore sighed. “Not much, I grant you, but a… small mercy.”

Harry hung his head, tears dripping unchecked off his nose and chin.

Mercy? Perhaps it was a mercy that Draco had been spared a horrific transformation into a non-human creature, but that wasn’t how Lucius and his master had meant it. They knew nothing of mercy, so they must have had another reason not to turn Draco into a werewolf. A reason that might end up being worse than the alternative.

“Do you have any idea what Draco was so afraid of?” Dumbledore asked, softly.

Harry shook his head without lifting it to meet the old wizard’s gaze.

“Do you know who attacked him in the dungeons?”

“No, but I assume it was the Slytherins.”

“Why?”

Harry lifted his head and wiped his face on his sleeve. “Because they’re the only ones I can think of who might want to hurt him and could get near him.”

“Why would they want to hurt him?”

Before Harry could answer this, Kingsley interrupted them, his deep voice full of doubt. “I’m not convinced a student could have done this, Dumbledore. Not with the level of magic used.”

“The Cruciatus Curse doesn’t take a lot of skill,” Harry pointed out, “just a lot of hate. Bellatrix Lestrange taught me that.”

“It wasn’t just the Cruciatus. I found evidence of other magic when I examined Malfoy, very strong magic.”

“I saw that, too,” Pomfrey said, frowning, “but I didn’t know what to make of it.”

“Are we talking about remnants of another curse?” Dumbledore asked.

Kingsley answered, “Not remnants. Whatever this is, it’s still active. It’s strongly connected to Malfoy. I couldn’t neutralize it and I couldn’t identify the spell that created it.”

“Interesting.”

“Are you saying that Draco still has some Dark spell attacking him?” Harry demanded.

“I don’t know exactly what it’s doing to him,” Kingsley replied, “but it has the definite feel of Dark magic about it.”

Harry turned to Dumbledore, feeling a stab of something between panic and excitement. “Maybe that’s what Draco was so afraid of! Maybe they put some kind of curse on him! If you can break it…”

“I’ll certainly try, my boy, but we must proceed carefully. I can’t do anything until I know what kind of spell it is.”

“Draco can tell us.”

“Perhaps,” Dumbledore mused, his fierce gaze suddenly turned inward, thinking. “Perhaps this is the handle we need…”

Harry lurched to his feet, suddenly frantic to be back with Draco again. “Please, Professor, may I go? I’ve told you everything I know, and I really need to be there when Draco wakes up.”

The bright, blue eyes came back to the present and fixed on his face. “Yes, I think so. Kingsley? Do you need anything more from Mr. Potter?”

“Not at the moment. Thank you for your honesty, Harry.”

Harry nodded and headed for the door. As he put his hand on the latch, he remembered something and turned back. “You asked me why the Slytherins would want to hurt Draco.”

“Yes?” Dumbledore prompted.

“He was afraid of them. He thought they knew about us—that he was shagging me—and they were going to use it against him.”

“Do you think he was right?”

“Honestly? No. I think if they did know, the whole Wizarding world would know by now. But they were holding _something_ over him.”

“All right. Thank you, Harry.”

Harry nodded and slipped out the door.

He found Snape sitting in the uncomfortable, metal chair next to Draco’s bed, reading an enormous book with moldy leather binding. At Harry’s appearance, he closed the book, sending a cloud of dust up from the mottled pages. His bitter, black eyes studied Harry for a moment, then he stood and stalked around the screen without saying a word. Harry breathed a sigh of relief and moved up to the bed.

Madam Pomfrey had done her best to make Draco comfortable. He lay as if asleep, his head resting on the pillow, his arms at his sides. She had bandaged the wounds on his head and hands, cleaned him up, dressed him in flannel pajamas, and tucked him beneath a layer of warm blankets. He should have looked peaceful. He just looked broken.

Harry sat on the edge of the mattress and lifted the other boy’s hand in both of his own. “Hey, Dragon.” He pressed a kiss to the cold, white fingers, then pulled their clasped hands to his chest. “I’m back.”

Draco did not answer.

 

*** *** ***

 

The Slytherin common room was suspiciously quiet when Snape strode through the door. A dozen or more students sat primly about the room, pretending to ignore the evidence of hard partying all around them. There were bits of clothing and food still strewn on every surface. Someone had shoved an empty Firewhiskey bottle half under a cushion on the settee. Another wit had hung an effigy of the Gryffindor lion from a suit of armor, a Slytherin green scarf tied around its neck and an ornamental dagger stuck through its leg.

Snape took all this in, his lip curled with amused disgust, then said dryly, “Celebrating Gryffindor victories now, are we?”

Several heads came up.

“They won, but not by much,” Pucey replied, earning him nods and mutters from the rest. “Potter muffed it today, caught the Snitch too soon, and we’re still in the lead for the Cup!”

“I see.”

Was it just his imagination, or were the eyes fixed on him more wary than usual? Not that the students in his House ever greeted him with warmth or welcome, but this lot looked positively frightened. All amusement fled, and the glance he cast round at the upturned faces was calculated to freeze their blood.

Zabini was the only Sixth Year in the room. He sat at one end of the settee, a textbook open in his lap and a look of disinterest on his flawless features. Snape held his gaze for a moment, noting that the boy did not flinch, then looked away, dismissing him. Zabini was not the type to soil his hands by physically attacking a fellow student. If he wanted to hurt Malfoy, he’d do it with his rapier tongue and magnificent disdain, not his fists.

He found it interesting, not to say damning, that none of Malfoy’s immediate circle of friends were here. Crabbe, Goyle, Nott, Parkinson. They had all made themselves scarce. Because they were sleeping off an excess of Firewhiskey? Or because they were cowering in hiding?

Another sweep of the room and he came to a snap decision. “Urquhart. My office. Now.”

Urquhart scrambled to his feet, shooting a panicked look at Pucey. “Is something wrong, Professor?”

“ _Now_ ,” Snape repeated, giving the boy his fiercest glare. “The rest of you, clean this place up and get that revolting thing off the Baron’s armor. Try to show a modicum of respect.” Then he turned and strode out of the common room without turning to see if Urquhart followed.

In his office, Snape lit the candles with a wave of his wand and moved behind his desk. “Sit.”

Urquhart sidled over to the indicated chair, his eyes jumping nervously from Snape to the various jars of pickled specimens that lined the walls and glowed balefully in the candlelight. He sat on the extreme edge of the chair, his hands clamped between his knees. Then he licked his lips with a very dry tongue.

“I understand your little party got out of hand,” Snape said evenly.

Urquhart started at his direct approach. His prominent adam’s apple bobbed in a nervous swallow and his gaze skated away. Snape waited, poised, ready for the moment when those darting eyes finally lifted to his face. “Ummm…”

“Words, Urquhart, or are they beyond you?”

“I suppose we, uhh… did some drinking…”

“Some drinking. Is that how it started? You pickled your brains on Firewhiskey and decided to liven things up with a spot of murder?”

“ _Murder?!”_ Urquhart squeaked, his eyes flying to Snape’s face.

Then he was caught. Black eyes bored into hazel, trapping them, penetrating them, slamming through the boy’s nonexistent barriers and into his mind before he realized what was happening. Snape read panic, confusion, disbelief. Images whirled around him, refusing to settle or focus, until he snarled an order.

“Show me what you did to Malfoy!”

 

When Snape finally withdrew from the boy’s memories and focused his gaze on the present, he saw Urquhart huddled in his chair, shaking, cheeks slicked with tears. He said nothing, just stared at the Potions Master with wide, stunned eyes. Snape glared at him, weighing what he’d seen and what to do with it. Then he pulled his wand and pointed it at Urquhart’s forehead.

The boy recoiled. “What… what are you doing?”

“Tying your tongue. You will say nothing about what happened to Malfoy in the dungeon or to you in this office. You will go back to the common room, rejoin your friends,” he lifted his lip derisively at the word, “and pretend we never spoke.”

“That’s it?” he asked, torn between disbelief and dawning hope.

Snape leaned closer, his wand only a breath away from drilling into Urquhart’s sweaty forehead. “Don’t think for one moment that this is over or that you won’t pay for your actions. I will see to it that you and your confederates pay very dearly indeed. In the meantime, you will say nothing. Not for your sakes, but for Malfoy’s.”

“We didn’t mean to hurt him!” Urquhart blurted out, his eyes crossing in an attempt to focus on the threatening wand. “We wouldn’t have…!”

Rage simmered inside Snape at the thought of what he’d seen in Urquhart’s mind, of the marks on Malfoy’s body, of the blood on his face. He knew a momentary impulse to curse the boy and mete out just a taste of the pain his victim had felt, but squelched it in time. Instead, he stared straight into Urquhart’s eyes and formed the incantation in his mind. _Mimble wimble._

Urquhart flinched and gagged. Then he opened his mouth and tried to speak, only to utter another gagging noise.

“Who won the match today?”

“Gryffindor,” Urquhart said normally. His brows rose at the sound of his own voice.

Snape smirked at him and got to his feet. “Back to the common room. And don’t get any bright ideas, Urquhart. No letters home. No leaving the castle except for classes. I expect you to be a model and _very discreet_ student until I devise a punishment for you. Do we understand each other?”

Urquhart nodded.

With another smirk, Snape ushered him out of his office and back to the common room. Stepping through the door behind the boy, he halted just inside and glanced around. “Vaisey,” he barked. “My office.”

 

* * *

 

Dumbledore perused the sheet of parchment in his hands with a frown on his bearded lips. “You’re sure this a complete list?”

“I’m sure. Their… accounts were very consistent.”

Dumbledore’s brows rose at that. “And you’re satisfied that they did not cast the Cruciatus Curse?”

“Quite. They used no magic at all.” His mouth twisted into a bitter sneer. “With seven against one, they hardly needed it.”

“Mr. Malfoy was armed with his wand, but Poppy tells me that his physical condition is so deteriorated that his magic has been affected. He may not have been able to defend himself, even if he tried.”

“He didn’t try.” Snape scowled blackly, remembering yet again what he’d seen in the minds of the boys who had attacked Malfoy. “He was already in the grip of some spell when they reached him and made no attempt to fight back.”

Dumbledore fell quiet, once more frowning down at the parchment.

“What are you going to do with them, Dumbledore?” Snape finally asked. “They can’t go unpunished.”

“Certainly not.”

“They didn’t use an Unforgivable Curse on Malfoy, but they did nearly kill him, and they intended to do worse.”

Dumbledore’s head came up sharply. “We can’t punish them for what they intended.”

“We also can’t overlook the fact that they might well have gang-raped one of their housemates!” he snarled.

“No. We can’t.” The Headmaster sighed and slipped the fingers of his uninjured hand up under his spectacles to press against his eyes. “This is very troubling, Severus.”

“Which part? Mysterious curses coming out of nowhere? Students beating a classmate senseless? A sixteen-year-old boy handed to a werewolf as a sex toy?”

“All of it.” He dropped his hand and fixed weary, blue eyes on his trusted colleague. “I know you think me a heartless manipulator, but when I look at that boy, the heart I do not have breaks. I want to rescue him at any cost.”

“Why don’t you?” Snape asked, roughly. He could not remember a time when he’d heard Dumbledore speak in this way. It moved him, but it also chilled him.

“I don’t know that I can.” He lifted and turned his blackened hand, gazing at it in bemusement. “Or that I’ll have the time.”

“Have Shacklebolt make his report to the Ministry,” Snape growled, pain putting an edge on his voice that he didn’t intend. “All of it. Publicize what Lucius is doing to his son and guarantee that Draco never has to go back to that house.”

“Without Draco’s consent? Without knowing what pressure Voldemort has put on him? According to Harry, he believes his parents will die if he disobeys. Then there’s the vexed question of who cast the Cruciatus Curse on him and how.”

Snape scowled at the desk in helpless fury. “I see your point.”

“I cannot take any action until I know what kind of magic is still bound to that boy and how someone reached him with an Unforgivable Curse through all the protections placed on this castle.”

“So we keep all of it secret?”

“For now.”

“Will Shacklebolt agree to that?”

Dumbledore nodded. “For now.”

“And the Slytherins who tried to kick in Malfoy’s skull?”

“Hm.” His eyes dropping to the parchment with its list of names once more, the old wizard tapped his steepled fingertips against his lips. “What steps have you already taken?”

“I used a Tongue-Tying curse to keep them from talking about the attack, but that was just an emergency measure ’til I could speak to you.” He ground his teeth in fury for a moment, then snapped, “They should all be expelled!”

Dumbledore gave him a quizzical look over the tops of his spectacles. “You would be left with no Quidditch team.”

“Merlin’s Balls, Dumbledore…!”

“My apologies, Severus. That was an ill-timed attempt to lighten the mood.”

“You’re taking a very cavalier attitude about this!”

“I am not.” His expression was suddenly stoney. “I will punish those boys when I deem it safe to do so, but I will not put Mr. Malfoy in still more danger by acting on an angry impulse.”

“Understood,” Snape groused, slumping back in his chair. “So what do we do with them?”

Dumbledore broke out in a wide, guileless smile. “Put them in quarantine.”

 

*** *** ***

 

“The whole fewkin’ table is empty,” Seamus muttered, his eyes skating to the other side of the Hall and the Slytherin table under its green and silver banner.

Hermione followed his gaze. In fact, the table wasn’t empty. All of the younger students were there, clustered at one end of it, as if afraid to sit in the places left by their older housemates. Nearly all of the older boys were gone—only the haughty and lovely Blaise Zabini still in evidence—and the girls looked strangely cowed. Hermione wondered if they knew what had happened to the boys.

“Where’d they all go?” Colin asked curiously, breaking into her thoughts.

“I bet they were expelled,” Dennis said in a hushed, awed voice, “for doing Dark Magic.”

Dean scoffed at that. “We’d’ve heard. They couldn’t expel that many students without it showing up in _The Prophet._ ”

“McGonagall said they all caught something,” Parvati said.

“Like the flu?” Dennis piped in.

“The what?” Seamus demanded.

“Influenza. It’s a Muggle disease,” Dean said.

“A _Muggle disease?_ ” Seamus cackled with glee. “The Slytherins are all dying of a _Muggle disease?_ That’s brilliant!”

Dean grinned but shook his head. “The flu wouldn’t kill them. Just make them _wish_ they were dead.”

“I heard it was Dragon Pox,” Lavender whispered with a dramatic shudder.

“Don’t be silly,” Hermione huffed, unable to control herself any longer. “Dragon Pox is highly contagious. If the Slytherins had caught it, we’d all be in quarantine by now or Dumbledore would have closed the school.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

“ _I_ don’t know. Maybe they all got food poisoning.”

The other Gryffindors promptly looked down at their plates, and several pushed them away. Ron rolled his eyes and took a huge bite of shepherd’s pie.

“House-elves have never poisoned me yet,” he mumbled through his food, spraying the Creeveys with mashed potatoes in the process. “And I don’t bloody care where the Slytherins’ve got to, as long as they stay away from me.”

“I’ll bet they invented a new disease all their own. Something they brewed up in that dungeon,” Seamus said.

The others all laughed, and Dean smacked his hand on the table in triumph. “Slytherin Pox!”

That brought another chorus of laughter and several shouts of “Yes! Slytherin Pox!” from up and down the table.

“Do they come out in green and silver spots?” Parvati suggested slyly.

“And snake scales?” Lavender added.

Seamus snorted with laughter. “That’d be an improvement for Malfoy. He’s already half snake, anyway—the half that isn’t ferret.”

“He was the first one to go,” Lavender pointed out, “so he must have given it to the rest of them.”

“Serves them right. They probably got it kissing his skinny arse.”

Hermione abruptly pushed away her plate and got to her feet. “Come on, Ron, let’s get started on our Charms homework.”

“Huh?” Ron blinked up at her for a moment, then seemed to register the cold fury in her face and scrambled to follow. “Oh, right. Charms.”

“Hey, Ron, what’s up with Harry?” Dean asked, as Ron and Hermione climbed over the bench to escape. “He didn’t catch the Slytherin Pox, did he?”

“Harry had an accident,” Hermione said repressively. “He’ll be in the hospital wing for a few days.”

“What _kind_ of accident?” Lavender demanded.

“The kind that’s nobody’s business but his. He’ll be fine, as soon as the hex wears off.”

With that enigmatic remark, she turned on her heel and stomped away, drawing Ron along with her. They left the Hall, but instead of making for the stairs and the homework awaiting them in the Gryffidor tower, Hermione turned for the huge, oaken doors that let out onto the grounds.

“Oi. Where are we going?” Ron asked, as she tapped the doors with her wand to open them.

“I need some air.”

“It’s ruddy cold out there, Hermione.”

“Use a warming charm. You need the practice.”

Ron heaved a long-suffering sigh but followed her out of the castle and onto the grounds. It was winter. The grass was sere and brown, the trees bare, the sky a leaden grey. But to Hermione, the bleak landscape was more inviting than the castle full of gloating, whispering, gossiping students. She set off on a path that took her round the castle toward the Forest.

“You okay?” Ron asked, when they were out of sight of the main doors. His breath formed a white cloud in front of his face.

“I just couldn’t stand listening to them anymore, what they said about Draco. It made me sick.”

“I know, but maybe it’s good.”

“ _Good?_ ”

He shrugged. “It means they still think he’s the king of Slytherin House.”

“Hmmph. Well. At least they have no idea what really happened to him, if they think he’s infecting the rest of the Slytherins with imaginary diseases.”

Ron grinned and nudged her with an elbow. “Slytherin Pox? You’ve got to admit that’s brilliant.”

Her lips twitched as she tried to smother a smile.

“Maybe we should tell Harry about it,” Ron suggested. “He can have Madam Pomfrey paint some green and silver spots on him and tell everybody he caught the Slytherin Pox.”

A grin finally broke over Hermione’s face, and she laughed. “Just don’t tell Luna. She’ll think it’s real and put a story about the Great Hogwarts Slytherin Pox Outbreak in the next issue of _The Quibbler_.”

 

*** *** ***

 

It took three days.

He sat in a chair beside the bed and slept with his head on the mattress. Madam Pomfrey brought him meals and bullied him into eating them. Hermione brought his homework and tried to bully him into doing it, with indifferent success. He occasionally read from his textbooks to pass the time, but he ignored the assignments.

When anyone came into the hospital wing, he pulled the screens closed and cast a locking spell to keep them out. Luckily, it was a slow week for injuries and Charms accidents. And since no one caught the fabled Slytherin Pox, he had the ward to himself most of the time. He could stay beside Draco round the clock, except when Madam Pomfrey shooed him away so she could examine her patient.

By late afternoon of the third day, he was beginning to lose hope. What if Madam Pomfrey’s direst predictions proved right? What if Draco was too weakened by months of illness and trauma to bounce back? What if the mysterious spell, which no one had yet identified, was draining him still further and slowly killing him? What if this silence and slow fading was all that was left to them?

Harry watched as Madam Pomfrey used a spell to put fluids into Draco’s body. He’d tried to describe to her the Muggle way of doing this, with needles and IV bags and rubber tubes, but she’d just stared at him as if he had antennae sprouting from his forehead, then shaken her head and tsked in amused disgust.

“Muggles. Bless them,” was all she had to say.

The spell was quick, neat and painless, so Harry couldn’t argue with her methods. He only wished that he had the constant, physical reminder of a dripping IV and beeping machines that his dragon was still alive. Maybe it was his Muggle upbringing that made the magical way feel wrong. It was so quiet. So invisible. And Draco was so still…

Alone with his lover again, he picked up his hand and cradled it to his chest. Then he used his free hand to comb his fingers through the other boy’s hair. The cut on his forehead had healed to ragged, pink scar. Harry brushed it with his thumb, feeling the roughness of the new tissue. Rising half out of his chair, he pressed his lips to it.

Draco sighed and turned his head.

Harry jerked back as if he’d been hit with a Stinging hex, an exclamation on his lips, then gave a gulping sob as he felt Draco’s hand move in his.

Was he imagining this? Was he losing his mind?

Draco took a long, uneven breath and his eyelashes twitched.

“Dragon?” Harry whispered, sinking slowly down into his seat again and reaching to cradle the other boy’s head with his free hand. “Can you hear me?”

“Nngh.”

“Dragon…” Harry felt tears slipping down his face and hastened to wipe them away with his sleeve before the Slytherin opened his eyes and saw them. He leaned closer until his chin rested on the pillow beside Draco’s head, while his hand stroked the other boy’s silver-gilt hair. “I love you, Dragon. Open your eyes. Please.”

The pale lashes twitched again, then lifted to reveal a pair of dazed, clouded, grey eyes. “Harry.”

His voice didn’t qualify as a whisper. It was more a movement of his lips than anything, but Harry heard him loud and clear. He laughed in relief. It turned to a sob halfway through, and more tears spilled from his eyes. Then he pressed a kiss to Draco’s temple.

Draco turned to meet Harry’s tear-bright eyes with his own shadowed ones and said, still in that same soundless whisper, “They found out.”

 

**_To be continued…_ **

 


	7. Life is Pain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter comes from "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman. It's in both the book and the movie, in slightly different forms, but the most famous version is from the movie: "Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something."
> 
> This is the most violent chapter in the story, including torture and rape. It doesn't go on for long, but it's pretty graphic, so proceed with caution!

****Life is pain.

Draco had heard that once—he couldn’t remember where—and taken it to heart. In his more optimistic moments—all two of them—he took it to mean that as long as he could feel pain, he was still alive and entitled to hope. In his natural state of bitter cynicism, he simply accepted pain as a constant in his life and didn’t question it. Then there were those times when the pain was so unbearable that he would gladly end his life to escape it.

He was there, now.

He hurt so badly that he caught himself wondering, as he lay in his hospital bed with his eyes closed against the blades of sunlight that pierced his skull, if he could summon enough magic to AK himself. Or just blast his brain to scraps so he didn’t care anymore. He doubted it. He hadn’t been able to do much magic for weeks, and deliberately harming yourself with your own magic must take a tremendous amount of determination, if not raw power. Neither of which he had.

Then there was Harry. Much as he wished he had the nerve to hex himself into oblivion, Draco knew he couldn’t do it while Harry was beside him. Harry was his anchor to life. And when Harry touched him, the pain faded just enough to allow him room to breathe.

He found himself opening his eyes to check that Harry was still there, even when he had no strength to spare and no defense against the assault of light and vision. His head was crushed, his skull turned to pulp, agony leaking from its shattered remains to soak his pillow like blood. He couldn’t move without vomiting from the pain. He couldn’t focus his eyes on the face hovering beside him. But still he had to look, to reassure himself that his anchor was still there.

Harry, bless him, stayed at his side and didn’t ask for explanations, didn’t even ask him to open his eyes. He just sat and held Draco’s hand, and when Dracoslitted his eyes open, he moved up onto the mattress so he didn’t have to turn his head to find him. Then he smiled, kissed his hand, stroked his hair and called him Dragon. Over and over again, with no hint of impatience or reproach.

Draco wanted grab him, pull him close, kiss him rapturously and tell him that he was everything right in his world. Instead, he gazed blearily up at his lover’s pale, blotchy, gorgeous face and let tears of weakness slide from beneath his lashes until he couldn’t stand the way the light cut into his head a moment longer. Then he closed his eyes and went back to wishing he were dead.

 

He had no idea how long this went on. It felt like an eternity. Madam Pomfrey woke him from a dream of torture and betrayal to ask him questions he couldn’t follow. Then she lifted his head to pour a potion down his throat. He cried like a baby at that, humiliating himself and frightening Harry, and threw up the nothing that was in his stomach. She was ruthless. Who knew nice, old Madam Pomfrey had it in her?

Once she finally forced the potion down his throat, it eased the pain and let him sink into a kind of stupor that was better than sleep. He didn’t dream. When the potion wore off, she made him drink some soup that he miraculously managed to keep down. Then he really did sleep.

Harry was still there when he woke up.

Weasley and Granger came by. Draco took one look at Weasel’s face and shut his eyes very tightly for the rest of the visit. He realized that he was feeling marginally better when Granger spoke to him in her penetrating, know-it-all voice and he didn’t flinch, but he still couldn’t bear to look at the pity and worry in her face.

As they were leaving, Weasel put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Take it easy, Ferret. And don’t worry about those Slytherins cunt-rags. They’ve all come down with the Pox.”

That forced him to open his eyes. Ron grinned down at him, managing to look worse than before. “Don’t ask. Just forget them.”

Draco set his teeth to hold down his rising nausea and forced his arm to move. He lifted a hand to touch Ron’s arm, the closest he could get to a thank you. Weasel clasped his hand for a moment, murmured a goodbye, and left with Granger.

 

The next time Draco awoke, he found himself curled up on his side, his pillow tugged down so he could wrap his arms around it in his sleep. He yawned and opened his eyes, wincing very slightly at the glare, then rolled over. A twinge of pain in his head made him grimace, but his stomach stayed where it belonged.

“You’re moving again. That has to be a good sign.”

He turned his head without thinking and grunted when fireworks went off in his head. Then his eyes fell on Harry. An actual smile, the first he’d managed in living memory, lifted his lips.

“Harry,” he croaked, his voice rough with disuse.

“Dragon.” The Gryffindor leaned forward to kiss him, sliding an arm behind his head. Draco felt his hand cup the back of his head. It didn’t hurt. When his lips were free again, Harry asked, “Want some brekkies?”

“Mm. Tea. Can I h-have…” His head swam, smearing his thoughts for a moment, and he realized that he was too weak even to finish a proper sentence.

“I’ll ask Madam Pomfrey. It won’t be much of a breakfast, just soup and dry toast. Invalid stuff. But maybe she’ll loosen up and let you have a cuppa.”

Harry started to get to his feet, but Draco reached out to brush his arm with his fingertips, halting him. “Harry.”

“Hmm?”

“You haven’t asked.”

“About what happened? I know some of it. You’ll tell me the rest when you’re ready.” He cocked his head, his incredibly tired eyes filling with uncomplicated affection. “I just want you to get better.”

“I s-said something… when I first woke up. I said…”

Sadness darkened Harry’s face and started a new ache in Draco’s chest. “That they found out? I assume you mean the Slytherins.”

He couldn’t nod without setting off the fireworks again, so he made a throaty noise of assent instead. “Mm. They found out what I’m doing for my father.”

“I figured.” Harry sank back into his chair, now holding Draco’s hand protectively in both of his own. “That’s why they came after you. They think you’re fair game.”

“Mm.” He turned his head away slightly and closed his eyes, too pained by the look on Harry’s face to see it anymore.

“Ron was right,” Harry said earnestly, “you don’t have to worry about them. Dumbledore’s got them shut up in the dungeon, under quarantine. Everyone thinks they’ve got some infectious disease.”

He almost laughed as the pieces fell into place, but he knew that would be a mistake, so he breathed out a huff of air. “The Pox.”

“Right.” He could hear the grin in Harry’s voice. “The whole school is saying they’ve caught the Slytherin Pox, which makes Snape smoke at the ears, but the rest of us think it’s hilarious.” He sobered. “Far as I can tell, Dumbledore is keeping them under wraps so that no one finds out what really happened to you. He doesn’t want the Ministry or your family involved, until he’s got all the facts.”

Draco opened his eyes and blinked at him.

This was headed nowhere good. The last thing he wanted to do was to give Albus Dumbledore _all the facts_. As if in answer to his thoughts, his right hand began to prickle.

Harry was looking decidedly shifty, which only increased the squirming in Draco’s innards. He was rubbing Draco’s knuckles with his thumb and shooting him glances from under his lashes. When he started gnawing on his lip, Draco ran out of patience.

“What?” he asked, in his thin, rasping voice.

“You aren’t going to like it.”

“I got that.”

“Right. Only… I had to tell them.”

Draco blinked again. “Tell who what?”

“Dumbledore and Kingsley Shacklebolt and Madam Pomfrey…”

Realization dawned, followed by disbelief, then by cold horror in rapid succession. A lump of ice slid from his throat, down into his stomach. “You didn’t.”

Harry nodded and threw a pleading look at him. “They already knew most of it. I just… told them who.”

“Bloody hell.”

“I swear I didn’t have a choice! They were going to tell your parents! Dumbledore kept going on about how you were underage and they were responsible for you and he had an obligation to them. I _told_ him that he had to keep them away from you, but he said he couldn’t do that without a good reason. So I… I had to give him one.”

A sob rose to choke Draco. He lifted his free hand to cover his eyes, trying to hide the tears that squeezed from between his lashes. “Bloody fucking hell, Harry!”

“I’m sorry, Dragon! I told them you’d never forgive me! But I couldn’t let them send you back to you parents. I couldn’t bear to lose you that way.”

Draco took another sobbing breath and exhaled it on a groan of raw agony. It wasn’t just his head. Or his hand. Or the weight of tears on his chest. He felt as if he were being ripped in pieces by shame and anger and betrayal. Almost as if the Cruciatus Curse were consuming him again.

“Let me help, Dragon,” Harry begged, reaching for him.

Hands touched his shoulders, lifting him from the bed, and he howled, “ _Don’t touch me!_ ”

“Sorry,” Harry mumbled, lurching to his feet and backing away. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

“It’s not that, you fucking moron,” Draco gasped. “It _hurts!_ ”

Harry sank down on the mattress. Draco couldn’t open his eyes, couldn’t look at him, but he could clearly picture the expression on his face—hurt, pleading, tear-stained, eyes glowing with power even when he was totally lost and confused, so beautiful that it hurt Draco even to think of it. “You don’t want me to go?”

Draco answered through clenched teeth, mustering the closest thing he could to his old vicious snarl, “Since I’ll fucking kill myself if you do, no. I bloody well don’t.”

“Please don’t say things like that.”

“Please stop being such a _twat!_ ”

Harry sat very quietly for a long minute, while Draco struggled to hold himself together and breathe through the pain. He kept his hand over his eyes so he wouldn’t be tempted to look at the Gryffindor, but the stab of betrayal was already softening into the ache of longing. He still hated Harry for what he’d done. He still wanted to crawl into a hole and pull it in after him. He still dreaded the moment when he would have to look Dumbledore or Pomfrey in the face again. But he needed Harry far more desperately than he needed to hate him or to hide from him.

“Can I hold your hand?” Harry suddenly asked, his voice edged with tears.

Draco silently held out his right hand to Harry. The spell in it was warming, tingling, but he ignored it. Harry’s fingers closed firmly around his and the spell subsided.

How did he do that?

“I warned them how angry you’d be, that you’d never forgive me…”

“Don’t you think we’re past that?”

“I swear I didn’t do it to hurt you. All I want is to protect you from your father, Voldemort, all of them.”

At the sound of the Dark Lord’s name, Draco felt a chill grip him. His hand twitched in Harry’s as he tried to pull away.

“Is your hand hurting again?”

Draco abruptly dropped his left hand and turned a startled gaze on Harry.

“What,” Harry said, with a fractional smile, “you thought I didn’t notice? Kingsley and Madam Pomfrey found some unfamiliar magic bound to you—a Dark spell they can’t neutralize. Is that what makes it hurt? Some kind of spell?”

Draco opened his mouth. Shut it again. Swallowed convulsively. “I can’t talk about it.”

“Because it isn’t safe?” Harry’s voice was soft and understanding, a question in it, but no demand.

Draco nodded and covered his eyes again.

“You don’t have to tell me, Dragon, but you will have to tell Dumbledore. He’s the one who can help you.”

“He can’t.”

“At least let him try.”

 

*** *** ***

 

Draco remembered Harry’s words when he found himself confronting the Headmaster the next day.

He was feeling markedly better, able to sit up, eat solid food, enjoy a cup of tea. His headache lingered, and Madam Pomfrey cast a spell to dim the sunlight pouring in through the tall, arched windows. This helped, as did the muting spell that blocked out the noise of footsteps on marble floors or the clatter of instruments on metal trays. Draco felt as if he were wrapped in cotton wool—safe, warm and cushioned from harm—and after the first moment of hideous embarrassment when he looked at the old nurse and saw the kindly concern in her eyes, he was able to let down his guard just a little.

Then Dumbledore walked in.

He sent Harry away with a flick of his eyes, then put up a spell that cut off all noise from outside the screen. Draco eyed him warily and told himself not to rub his hand when it tingled.

“I’m glad to see you looking so well, Mr. Malfoy.”

“Thank you,” Draco mumbled through cold, stiff lips.

He had never liked Dumbledore, never felt the connection to him that Harry did. He knew that this fearsome wizard was a force for good in their world, whatever his father had told him to the contrary, and vital to their chances of victory over the Dark Lord. He knew that Harry trusted, even revered him. He knew these things, but he didn’t feel them. All he felt in this moment was panic.

“Is your headache better?” Draco nodded slightly. “Excellent. I can fetch you a pain potion, if you feel you need one.”

“I don’t. Sir.”

“Very well.”

Dumbledore pulled up the chair that Harry had occupied for so many hours, and when he sat down, it appeared to have grown several inches. Draco also caught a glimpse of flowered cushions on the seat and back. Dumbledore made himself comfortable in the improved chair and fixed bright blue eyes on Draco’s face.

“I need to ask you some difficult questions, my boy. I’m sorry to do this before you’ve had time to regain your strength, but I cannot delay any longer.”

Draco nodded again. He began, unconsciously, to rub his hand.

The Headmaster’s first question was soft and simple. “Do you remember what happened in the dungeons?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We can dispense with the ‘sir’,” Dumbledore said with a smile. “I won’t mistake brevity for disrespect, and considering how little energy you have to spare, why waste it on words?”

Draco said nothing to this, assuming that any answer would be a waste of energy, and Dumbledore nodded his approval.

“I know your Slytherin colleagues’ version of events, but I need to hear yours. How did you end up in the old, unused part of the dungeons?”

Draco licked his lips and started talking, his gaze fixed on his own toes poking up under the blankets. “There was a party in the common room. After the match.” Dumbledore made an encouraging noise to indicate that he understood. “It was getting noisy so I left. Some of them… followed me.”

“Who?”

“Older boys. Sixth and Seventh Years.”

“What did they do?”

“Chased me into the dungeons. I wanted to be alone so I ran… ran away… but they caught me.”

Dumbledore waited for him to go on. When he didn’t, he prompted softly, “And then?”

Draco licked his lips again to buy some time.

This was harder than he’d thought it would be. Not the telling—Dumbledore already knew enough to make embarrassment or concealment pointless—but controlling the direction of his thoughts while he did it. His hand burned insistently, warning him that he was not alone, and he fought to keep only the stark image of taunting, slavering boys in his head. Nothing more.

“They were angry.” His voice had dropped to an empty whisper. “They wanted me to fight back, but I was…”

“You were in pain,” Dumbledore said into the silence. “You couldn’t fight them because your magic was compromised by physical weakness and you were in too much pain even to try.”

Draco continued to stare at his toes, his chest aching with words he could not say and his head splitting with the effort of controlling his thoughts. He was losing the battle, as he’d lost in the dungeons, as he’d lost in greenhouse, as he’d lost in the vault…”

 _No!_ His head snapped up, careless of the agony the movement ignited in his skull, and his eyes lifted to the ceiling above him. Anywhere but Dumbledore’s face. _I won’t go there! I won’t! I swear it!_

“Draco, did your housemates use a Cruciatus Curse on you?”

“ _No!_ ” This time, the protest burst out of his mouth. He tried to snatch it back, too late, then uttered something perilously close to a whimper.

“Someone did.”

“It wasn’t them! It _wasn’t!_ ”

“They attacked you, kicked you in the head, almost killed you…”

“They were scared! That’s all!” he babbled, panic loosening his tongue. “They knew they’d be blamed if anyone heard me…”

“Heard you screaming in pain? Heard you being tortured with an Unforgivable Curse?”

“ _They just wanted to shut me up!_ ”

“Who cast the Curse, Draco?”

He clamped his teeth shut and closed his eyes.

_Think of nothing. Think of nothing. He doesn’t know, I didn’t tell him, I never will._

In the darkness behind his eyelids, he began running through Arithmancy equations. He had to struggle at first, but slowly, the equations began to unspool smoothly in his head and his heart slowed toward normal. His threatened tears cooled. His breathing evened out.

_I can do this._

Then Dumbledore spoke again. “It came through the spell bound to your hand, didn’t it?”

The equation he was working faltered. He missed a critical function.

“That spell links you to someone outside this castle and allows that person to reach you with magic.”

The equation vanished. _Think of nothing. I can do this._

“Who bound you with the spell, Draco? Who cast the Curse?”

He opened his eyes and felt treacherous tears spill down his cheeks. “I can’t,” he whispered. Then, merely moving his lips, not daring to put any breath behind it, he added, _He’ll hear._

A long silence met this statement, then Dumbledore asked quietly, “Can he hear me now?”

 _I don’t know._ “Please. I can’t.”

Another, longer silence. Then in the softest tone Draco had ever heard from him, Dumbledore said, “Look at me, Draco. You don’t have to say a word, just look at me and remember.”

He knew instantly what Dumbledore was asking of him—knew it, feared it, longed for it—and he shut his eyes tightly against a fresh rush of tears. _I’ll never tell him_ , he cried to the evil presence in his mind, _It’s our secret! I’ll never tell!_

At the same time, his breath hitching in terror, he lowered his head and lifted his lashes.Fierce blue eyes met his, caught them, held them. Power slipped into him, deft and painless. It entered through his eyes and seemed to open his mind like hands peeling back curtains to let in the sunlight. But beyond the curtains was only firelight… moving shadows… cold laughter…

And he was there.

 

_He knelt on the icy, stone floor. Naked. Heavy hands pressing down on his shoulders. Flames flickered and danced on the hearth, only a few feet away, but no heat touched him._

_Figures cloaked in black stood all around, their heads seeming to float above featureless bodies. He knew them all—family, friends, acquaintances—had chatted with them over drinks in the parlor and played with their children since he was old enough to walk. Now they stared at him is if they had never seen him before. He saw no pity in any of them. Even his father._

_One figure, taller than the rest, loomed between him and fire, seeming to banish all warmth from the room with its very presence. Lord Voldemort. He held a wand negligently in one hand and gestured with it as he spoke._

_“Look, all of you.” His voice was strangely high and carried through the chamber like the screech of a bird. “Look well at this creature, once the very flower of pureblood wizardry. The proud scion of_ two _ancient and noble families. And what is he now?”_

_Draco dropped his eyes and found himself staring in fascination at Voldemort’s bare, bone-white feet against the brutal stone of the floor. How did he not feel the cold? Was his flesh already frozen? Or did he, in truth, suck all the warmth from the room into himself, to stoke his internal fires?_

_“Debased! Defiled! Weak and worthless!” Voldemort pushed at Draco’s shoulder with one foot, and the Death Eaters holding him let go, allowing his body to topple sideways to the floor. “The last heir to the Houses of Malfoy and Black!” he mocked._

_A smaller figure darted forward, drawing Draco’s eyes. He recognized his Aunt Bellatrix even as she spat in his face and hissed, “It’s his Malfoy blood, Lord! No Black would crawl on his belly like that!”_

_Voldemort’s lipless mouth contorted in a smile that had no mirth in it. “Now, Bella, be fair. Every family has its… disappointments.”_

_Bellatrix scowled and drew back. Her glittering, black eyes jumped from Draco to Voldemort and back again. She bared her teeth in an animal snarl and spat at her nephew again, before whirling away to rejoin the ring of silent watchers. Draco felt her spittle strike his bare shoulder but made no move to wipe it off._

_“Never fear, my dear. Even this pitiful specimen will not go to waste. Get him up.”_

_His attendants—they could only be Crabbe and Goyle, to judge by their size; he didn’t dare look up at their faces—grabbed his arms and dragged him up to kneel before the Dark Lord again. Draco sat back on his heels and fastened his eyes to those chill, white feet._

_Voldemort paced up to him. Draco felt long, spidery fingers in his hair, grasping his head, tilting it up. Then he was staring straight into blood-red eyes with vertical slits for pupils. He tried not to react, but horror rose like bile in his throat and his body tried to recoil from the palpable evil hovering so close above him._

_The snake’s eyes studied him for what felt like years. When Voldemort spoke again, his voice came out in a hiss. “Yes, I can see the attraction. Such a lovely face. It’s a shame you do not have the pride, the strength, the courage to match.” A long, bloodless finger stroke his cheek. “You sold yourself too cheaply, boy. You ruined yourself and forfeited your chance to serve me willingly.”_

_Draco tried to open his mouth, to speak, to tell this loathsome creature that he’s rather die than serve him, but nothing came out._

_Voldemort laughed softly and answered as if he’d heard the words Draco couldn’t speak. “Make no mistake. Everyone will serve me in the end. For you, that end is now.” Without shifting his eyes from Draco’s or dropping his hand from his cheek, Voldemort called, “Lucius. Come.”_

_Draco saw movement from the corner of his eye, and his father sidled into view._

_“I need you for this.”_

_Lucius gave a cringing bow that made Draco want to grind his teeth. “I am yours to command, Lord.”_

_“Of course.” The words were cold and dismissive, infinitely insulting, and still Voldemort’s eyes bored into Draco while his hand caressed his cheek. “I have a task for you, Draco Malfoy. You are not worthy of my Mark, but I will bind you to me in another way. And you_ will _serve me.”_

_Voldemort abruptly switched his wand to his left hand and held out his right to Draco. “Take my hand.”_

_Draco lifted his hand and slipped it into Voldemort’s chill grasp._

_“Lucius.” He motioned the other man closer with a sweep of his wand, then pointed to a spot directly between himself and the kneeling Draco. “You will be party to the Vow, but only as a passive witness. I will form the bond, myself.”_

_Lucius bowed his head in acquiescence._

_Voldemort lifted his eyes to scan the crowd of watching Death Eaters. “All of you will bear witness to strengthen the Vow. But speak no word and use no magic.” Dropping his voice again, he said to Draco, “Look at me.”_

_Draco had no choice. His eyes flew up to meet the Dark Lord’s of their own volition and locked there, helpless to look away._

_Voldemort pointed his wand at their bound hands and, never shifting his gaze from Draco’s, said, “You, Draco Malfoy, will serve Lord Voldemort to the utmost of your strength and ability until he deems the terms of your service fulfilled.”_

_Words came out of Draco’s mouth before he could stop them. “I will.”_

_A tongue of fire shot from Voldemort’s wand and wrapped around their clasped hands, turning instantly into a squirming, black rope. Draco fought back a sob of disgust at the sight of it. His hand twitched, trying to withdraw, but Voldemort’s clasp and the rope of power held him in place._

_“You will perform any task he gives you without question or hesitation.”_

_This time, Draco fought to hold in the words, but they clawed their way out of his throat and slid between his clenched teeth. “I will.”_

_Another tongue of flame shot out. Another black rope bound them still more closely together._

_“You will satisfy Lord Voldemort’s demands, or you will die in a manner of his choosing.”_

_“I will!” he gasped, even as the final rope tightened about his hand._

_Power flared in the room. Pain rushed from Draco’s hand up his arm to his chest. He cried out and tried to wrench away. This time, Voldemort let him go._

_Draco fell to the floor, nursing his hand to his chest and weeping silent tears of despair. The hand burned hideously, as if each rope had been made of flame, and he saw angry, red weals marring the skin where the ropes of power had touched it._

_“You are mine, now, Draco Malfoy,” the Dark Lord hissed, standing over him with a gloating smile on his face. “You are my creature, to use as I will. And I think, perhaps, everyone here needs a demonstration of just what that means._ Crucio! _”_

_Pain exploded in Draco’s body—fire searing beneath his skin and eating at his bones. It was pain so terrible that, for an insane moment, he could not even cry out. He stiffened, his back arching into a bow of agony, his head straining back to press into the floor. Then he found his voice and a scream tore from his distended throat. He screamed and screamed, mindlessly, helpless in the grip of his agony, while his limbs unlocked and began to thrash against the punishing stone._

_And then, as quickly as it had started, it stopped._

_Draco collapsed, sobbing, not caring who saw or heard him weep now. He was dimly aware that his torturer—his master—was standing directly over him and speaking to the watchers, but he didn’t bother to listen. In some corner of his brain, he had realized, even as the torture drove him to the point of madness, that the curse had come through the bond. Not from Voldemort’s wand. Not from magic striking his unprotected body. But through the hideous ropes of power knotted about his hand._

_He lifted the hand, peered at it through tear-drenched eyes, and saw the weals pulsing evilly. As he watched, the redness faded, cooled, disappeared. No outward sign betrayed the presence of the spell. But it was still there. It still burned. And it still bound him to his master._

_“Let this be an object lesson to you all,” he heard Voldemort say, when he finally dragged himself back to any awareness of his surroundings. “Do not squander Lord Voldemort’s good will. Do not put yourself in this creature’s place.”_

_He took a step back and let his eyes caress Draco’s huddled, naked body. The boy felt them on his skin, like cold, bloodless fingers, and he shuddered, trying to withdraw into the stone to escape._

_“And just in case young Mr. Malfoy fools himself that his bond with Lord Voldemort confers some kind of honor or status upon him, I think we should remind him of just what he is.” The bloody gaze swept the room once more, coming to rest on a figure hunched in the darkest corner, outside the circle of chosen Death Eaters. “Fenrir. I promised you a reward, didn’t I?”_

_The figure started, looked around as if checking to be sure there was not another Fenrir sharing his corner. Then he straightened himself and stepped forward. “You did, my lord.”_

_“Come.” He nudged Draco with his toe, then placed a foot squarely on his shoulder and pushed it flat to the floor. Draco rolled onto his back and stared up at the inhuman face hovering between him and the ceiling. “The boy is yours for the night.”_

_Fenrir moved with incredible speed, leaping across the floor in a few bounds to land just a foot from where Draco lay. He stood like a man but moved like a beast, dropping to crouch on all fours as he approached his prey. A grin split his bearded face to show filthy, pointed teeth._

_“I’ve always wanted to taste this one. So pretty. So sweet.” He licked his teeth obscenely and laughed when Draco moaned in fear._

_“My lord!” Lucius started forward, his hand out, pleading. When Voldemort turned on him, he hunched into a bow. “My lord, please!”_

_Voldemort bared his teeth and hissed dangerously, making Lucius cringe. “You dare, Lucius?_ You?! _The boy is mine to use as I please!”_

_“Yes, my lord, of course. I- I only meant… Is it wise to hand him over to Greyback, to risk infection, when you have set him such a vital task?”_

_“Hm. You have a point.” Voldemort turned his eyes on the slavering Fenrir and chided, “No teeth, Greyback.”_

_The werewolf looked mutinous for a moment, then broke out in another feral grin. “Doesn’t mean I can’t have a taste, though.”_

_“Do as you like, but do not mark his face and do not risk infecting him.” He glanced at his expectant followers and picked out two of them. “Mulciber, Rowle, stay here and keep an eye on our friend. Make sure he doesn’t get carried away. The rest of you come with me.”_

_With the exception of the two men named, the Death Eaters began moving toward hearth. The flames were already green, ready to sweep Voldemort away, but he halted before stepping into them and turned back. “Not you, Lucius. You need the same lesson as your son. Watch and learn.”_

_Draco heard the swoosh of bodies being swept into the floo. He looked wildly around, hunting for his father, for some means of escape. All he saw were black robes and hard faces. And Fenrir Greyback leering down at him with his tongue between his teeth._

_“Do you taste as good as you look, little Malfoy? Eh? Let’s find out.”_

_One large, hairy hand fastened on Draco’s left wrist, pinning his arm to the floor. Then Greyback held up his thumb to show the long, wicked, yellow nail at its tip._

_“No teeth,” he growled._

_Draco sucked in a startled breath, as the hideous nail dragged down his forearm, leaving a trail of blood beads in its wake. He started to sit up, to jerk away, but a Death Eater’s foot came down on his shoulder to restrain him._

_“Hold still, boy. Don’t want him to slip.”_

_Greyback barked with laughter and dug in his nail again. This time, it tore through the skin, dragging cry of pain from Draco and a grunt of disgust from one of the watching men._

_“Salazar’s cock, Greyback, what are you doing?”_

_“Giving myself a treat,” the werewolf growled. He sucked the blood from his nail and moaned lasciviously. “Fresh Malfoy… doesn’t come any sweeter than that.”_

_Draco sobbed aloud and twisted his head away so he didn’t have to watch. The nail tore at him again and again, until he thought it must strike bone. And with every cut, every breath, he cried out, cried for help._

_“Father! Father, please! FATHER!” No answering voice came, but from the corner of his eye, he saw Lucius turn away to stare into the fire._

_The nail dug into his arm, parting the lips of the wound, then twisted and bit into the flesh of his arm. Draco screamed in agony, his back arching. Through slitted, tear-clogged eyes, he saw Greyback picking a piece of meat out of his nail with his teeth._

_“Father, help me…” He could hardly get the air to call out anymore, so his voice was a hoarse whisper. “Father…”_

_Suddenly, Greyback’s lips fastened on the wound and began to suck. Draco’s words dissolved into mindless screams and his mind swam into blackness._

_When he came back to himself, he was on his knees again with Rowle’s hand clamped on his neck, forcing his head down to rest on stone. Clawed fingers grasped his hips and lifted them. Someone laughed and made a crude remark about his pretty, white arse, and Greyback barked in answer. The claws moved to his back, raking it, catching at it, scrabbling for a purchase. He felt sour breath on his skin and began to sob in horror._

_In the instant that Greyback drove into him, Draco reared up and screamed. The terrible sound seemed to burst his ribcage, tear open the very fabric of the air, and hurl him bodily out of his own memory._

 

The screaming wouldn’t stop. He was back in the hospital wing, huddled against the headboard of his bed, bathed in sunlight with no dark-robed figures in sight. No Greyback. No Lucius. But still he screamed and shook and wept, while strong hands held his arms and a familiar voice spoke from just above him.

“That’s enough. Breathe, now, my boy. Breathe.”

He tried. He sucked in some air, feeling it sob in his chest, then let it out in a shattering cry of “ _Noooo!_ ”

“No one’s going to hurt you.” One hand released him. The other shifted to clasp his head. “Drink this. It will calm you.”

Glass touched his lips. He tried to wrench away, but the hands were surprisingly strong and wouldn’t let him go.

“Drink it, my boy.”

Helpless to resist, he opened his mouth and drank. The potion tasted of strawberries and mint. Draco hated strawberries and mint, but he swallowed it anyway, hiccuping childishly on his tears as he did so.

“That’s it. Good.”

The potion vial and the restraining hand disappeared. Draco slumped sideways onto his pillow, huddling miserably against it, still sobbing quietly, but he could feel the potion taking effect already. Slowly, inexorably, his muscles began to unlock and his breathing evened out. When he felt that he had some modicum of control over himself, he gulped back the last of his tears, twisted onto his back and opened his eyes.

Albus Dumbledore stood close by his head, looking down at him with concern in his face. As Draco watched, he pulled his wand from one wide sleeve and pointed it at his forehead.

“No… Please…” he croaked.

How many times had he said those words in the last months? How many people had ignored them?

“Trust me,” Dumbledore said.

_I don’t! I don’t! Please…!_

The spell struck him. He felt power ghost over his skin, saw a brief discharge of sparks, then a strange feeling of numbness and isolation enfolded him. It didn’t hurt—in fact, the pain in his hand was gone as if it had never been—but he felt oddly disconnected. His thoughts seemed to fade into a fuzzy, white static when he wasn’t looking directly at them, and his body didn’t seem properly wired to his brain.

“He can’t hear us,” Dumbledore said. Pulling his chair close again, he settled into it and tucked his wand back into his sleeve. “We can talk freely.”

Draco stared at him, wide-eyed. “What did you do?”

“I blocked your magic.”

Alarm shot through Draco, bringing him upright with a start. “You did _what?!_ ”

“I blocked your magic, in order to block the spell that binds you to Voldemort.”

“You can just switch it off? The spell?”

“No. I can shut it down at your end by shutting down your magic, but the spell is still very much intact.”

Draco pondered this for a long moment. He lifted his right hand, spread the fingers, turned it to look at the palm, then flexed and moved it experimentally. It felt like his hand. Perfectly normal. Except that his entire body felt wrong—unbalanced, unfocused, numb and unresponsive—and there was an odd hollow place at its center. So this is what it felt like to have no magic.

He shuddered and turned to meet Dumbledore’s thoughtful gaze, unconsciously knotting his hand into a fist and pushing it hard against his thigh. “What kind of spell is it?”

“As far as I was able to tell from your memories, it’s a corrupted form of Unbreakable Vow. I say corrupted, because you did not agree to bind yourself in this way. It was forced upon you against your will by an overwhelming power. But the effect is the same.”

“You mean… it’s still unbreakable.”

Dumbledore nodded, his face solemn. “There are two ways of freeing yourself from an Unbreakable Vow. Both parties can agree that you have fulfilled its terms, terminating the magical contract and severing the bond, or one party can die.”

“He’ll never agree that I’ve fulfilled the terms.”

“No.”

“So I’m his slave until I die.”

Why didn’t that frighten him more? Maybe because he’d known it all along. Or maybe because he’d rather be dead than enslaved to the Dark Lord.

“Or until he does.”

Dumbledore made it sound so matter-of-fact. So _possible._ Too bad it wasn’t.

“Can you keep it blocked?”

The old wizard nodded, but his expression was not reassuring. “By blocking your magic and, in effect, turning you into a Squib, but Voldemort will know that his connection to you is severed and come looking for you. He won’t need magic to punish you, if he can reach you with a spell, and you won’t have any magic with which to defend yourself. And if the block failed for any reason…”

“He’d kill me,” Draco whispered soundlessly.

The pity in Dumbledore’s face deepened, making Draco want to squirm. “The Unbreakable Vow is some of our most ancient and powerful magic, as old as Wizarding kind itself. We use it only at the direst need because it cannot be undone by any power known to us. To my knowledge, no wizard has ever dared to twist the Vow in such a way, to force it upon another magical being against his will, but Lord Voldemort has never been constrained by morality, decency or a concern for the consequences of his actions.”

“So what you’re saying is… I’m buggered.”

The old wizard smiled at that, his eyes crinkling at the corners with real amusement and, possibly, just a hint of affection. “There is always the chance that Voldemort will die and free you from this bond.”

Draco shuddered and wrapped his arms protectively about his body. He fancied, for a moment, that he could feel the cold of the Malfoy vault on his bare skin again. “Not soon enough.”

“I can try to hide you, if that’s what you want. I can block your magic, send you out of the country, put your location under the protection of a Fidelius Charm…”

Draco cut him off with a shake of his head. “He has my parents.”

“I understand.”

The warmth in his voice almost convinced Draco that he did understand. Bolstered by this acceptance of his loyalties, however perverse they might seem to an outsider, he straightened his shoulders and made himself meet the smiling, blue eyes directly. He felt something suspiciously like courage fill him.

“I’ll have to let him kill me. It’s the only way. I can’t do what he wants.”

“Don’t be hasty, my boy.”

“He’ll try to force me, first. Maybe I can delay for awhile, like I have been, but he’s getting impatient. And sooner or later, he’ll figure out that I’m not going to do it.”

“Do what?”

Draco swallowed once, summoned his almost-courage, and said, “Kill you.”

“Ah.” Sadness shadowed the old wizard’s face. He looked down at his blackened hand where it lay on his lap. “I see.”

“That’s not all!” Draco hurried to add, anxious to tell him the whole truth, now that he’d begun. “He wants me to get the Death Eaters into Hogwarts!”

“Did he say why?”

“No. Only that they have to witness your death. I don’t… I think it’s another way to humiliate me and my father… show how completely he owns me… but there has to be more to it than that. He wouldn’t risk the lives of his servants, bringing them into your stronghold, just to…”

Dumbledore’s withered hand touched his knee, halting his stumbling explanation. “Do you have a plan for achieving this?”

“I… yes. But I haven’t acted on it! I _haven’t!_ That’s why he tortured me!”

“I believe you, Draco. I don’t blame you for making plans to save your own life. But I think we’ve reached the point where you can no longer simply plan. You must act.”

Draco’s brows flew up to his hairline and his mouth dropped open. “You want me to do it?”

“That depends on what your plan entails.”

“There’s a Vanishing Cabinet. In the Room of Hidden Things. It’s broken now, but when it works, it connects to one in a shop called Borgin and Burke’s in Knockturn Alley.”

“I’m familiar with Borgin and Burke’s.”

“So, you know the owners are thick with the Dark Lord’s people. They aren’t Death Eaters, but they make a lot of money off of them and will do whatever they ask.”

“Including surrender their Vanishing Cabinet.” Draco nodded. “Your plan is to mend the Vanishing Cabinet here and let the Death Eaters use it to enter the castle without triggering the wards?” He nodded again. “That’s very clever, Draco.”

“Thank you, but I won’t do it.”

“I think you should.”

“ _What?!_ ”

“Oh, not usher a crowd of Death Eaters into Hogwarts, of course, but repair the cabinet.”

“But…” Draco stalled out, too gobsmacked even to come up with a protest.

“It’s the only way to keep yourself alive and untortured, while those of us tasked with killing Voldemort get on with it. Don’t look so appalled, my boy, I’m not suggesting that you hand the castle over to Voldemort. Or kill me, for that matter. But you can move forward with your plan, now that I know about it. I suggest you enlist Professor Snape to help you.”

“Snape is a Death Eater!” Draco blurted out.

The piercing, blue eyes fixed on him over the tops of half-moon spectacles. “Yes. He is also a trusted friend and agent for our side.”

“You mean, he’s a _spy?!_ ”

Draco didn’t believe it. Or only half believed it, anyway. No matter what Dumbledore said next, he couldn’t get the sight of Snape’s Dark Mark out of his head, or the very strong suspicion that the Potions Master knew all about what his father and the Dark Lord were doing to him.

“He is.”

“And you… you trust him?”

“Implicitly. He can guide you in your work on the cabinet, but he can also keep me fully informed and help me prepare a counter-attack when the time comes.”

“The time. What time? I won’t let them get in…”

“I know you won’t. Or you’ll try not to, at any rate. But we must be prepared for all contingencies, including an assault on the castle from inside and an attempt on my life.”

Draco stared at him in open horror, edged with terror. “You aren’t going to say that I should kill you.”

“No. I will do everything in my power to protect you—protect both of us—from that end. But Draco,” he lifted his blackened hand, holding it up in front of Draco’s wide, frightened eyes, “whatever happens, whatever either of us is forced to do, you _will not_ be responsible for my death. I need you to believe that.”

Draco swallowed the lump in his throat and made a small sound like a whimper.

“Even if I die at your hand, it will not be you who truly takes my life. It will not be murder.” His eyes pinned Draco with their fierce intensity, while his hand hovered between them. “Do you understand?”

He tore his gaze away from Dumbledore’s to stare at the hand. The dead, blackened, _cursed_ hand. “I think so.”

“Good.” He rose to his feet, all brisk friendliness now. “Then I will fetch Harry back in here and let you two chat. I leave it up to you to decide how much you share with him.”

“It’s safe to talk? You’ll keep my magic blocked?”

“For another day or two, yes. Just to let you rest and recuperate. But don’t worry, I’ll come up with a plausible reason for it, something that protects both you and your parents from Voldemort’s wrath.”

“How will you tell him?”

The lined, bearded face creased in a real smile, and his eyes twinkled. “We have our ways of spreading disinformation.”

“Professor Snape,” Draco said, smothering an instinctive jolt of suspicion at the sound of his name.

Dumbledore’s smile widened. “Perhaps.” He strode over to the opening in the screen and paused, turning back to the bed. “Take this time to rest and heal. Let Harry fuss over you. I know it’s hard to see it, but there is a way out of this for all of us. It won’t be easy. It’s by no means certain that we’ll succeed. But we’ll keep trying until will win or we die. That’s the reality of war, my boy. The important thing is to recognize that you’re not fighting alone.”

“Yes, sir,” he whispered.

Dumbledore nodded once, gave him another twinkling smile, and disappeared.

A moment later, Harry poked his head around the screen. He looked terrible—pale, disheveled, with black circles under his eyes and his hair standing up every which way—but he was smiling and his eyes lit when they saw Draco sitting up in bed.

“Can I come in?”

Draco just held out a hand to him. Harry bounded across the space between them to grab his hand. He pressed a kiss to the back of it but didn’t sit or reach for his love. He seemed uncertain just what Draco would allow.

Well, Draco could fix that.

Scooting to one side of the mattress, he gave a tug on Harry’s hand and pulled him onto the bed. Then he had both arms around him and his face buried in the curve of Harry’s neck and the smell of Harry Potter mixed with hospital-wing flannel filling his head. He pulled in a ragged breath and let it out on a soul-deep sigh of relief. Then he simply fell onto the bed, dragging Harry with him, and rolled fully against him.

Harry gave a ragged laugh and gathered Draco’s smaller body up in his arms. “Do you want to talk?” he said to the top of Draco’s head.

Draco spoke into the skin of his neck and the collar of his shirt, refusing to pull his face out of its perfect hiding place. “Later. I promise I’ll tell you everything, later. For now… just shut it.”

Harry laughed again, petted his hair, pressed a kiss to it and murmured, “I can do that.”

 

**_To be continued…_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there you have it. The complete story of what happened in the Malfoy vault. The next chapter will give our boys a little break - a chance to relax with no Voldemort listening in.


	8. Interlude in the Bath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long. I got distracted, and when I came back, the boys refused to play nice. They kept going all angsty on me.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this little slice of fun and smut (with a bit of Moaning Myrtle for variety). Please let me know what you think!

 

Draco and Harry were sitting, crosslegged, on the bed and eating a substantial lunch when Dumbledore came bustling onto the ward. He headed straight for the privacy screen, ignoring Madam Pomfrey’s demands for information. As he strode around it, both boys looked up in surprise.

“Your parents are on their way, Mr. Malfoy.”

Draco felt his entire body freeze as panic filled him, shrieking so loudly that he almost missed Dumbledore’s next words.

“Professor Snape is delaying them, giving us time to prepare. Mr. Potter,” the Headmaster’s eyes flicked to Harry, “you cannot be seen here.”

Harry scrambled off the bed and looked around helplessly. “I don’t have my cloak…”

“Into Madam Pomfrey’s office and do not come out until I fetch you.” He put a hand on Harry’s arm, halting his move to obey. “No matter what you hear, Mr. Potter. Understood?”

Harry swallowed visibly. “Understood.”

Dumbledore nodded, let him go, and did not waste another glance on him as he hurried away. All his attention was riveted on Draco, who sat like a marble statue in the middle of the bed, his eyes wide and his face blank.

“Listen very carefully, Mr. Malfoy. We have explained your isolation—both from the school at large and from Lord Voldemort’s spell—as necessary for your recovery. As far as your parents know, you’re under a stasis charm to keep you from doing permanent damage to your brain. This means that you can’t speak or move.”

Draco had so far recovered his senses by this point that he managed a nod.

“It’s up to you how we achieve this. If you believe that you can remain still and silent under any provocation, I won’t place you under magical restraint. If you doubt your abilities to play the part, it would be safer to actually perform the charm.”

“What would it do to me?” Draco asked through stiff, cold lips.

“Render you nearly unconscious. You would be able to hear and see what’s going on around you, but you would not be able to react.”

Draco shuddered and hugged himself protectively. “I’d be helpless.”

Dumbledore’s face softened. “That’s why I’m giving you the option. I don’t want to make you feel trapped, but your life depends on how well we can convince your father of your incapacity. If it helps, Madam Pomfrey, Professor Snape and I will be here with you. We won’t leave you alone for a moment, and the three of us can easily overpower Lucius, if it comes to that.”

Draco stared at the Headmaster from behind his blank Malfoy mask for a handful of heartbeats.

He had no time to think. His father was on his way, might be at the door even now with Severus Sodding Snape, Death Eater Extraordinaire and Right-hand Man to the Dark Lord, beside him. And Draco had to decide whether he’d rather try to play dead when he was ready to crawl out of his own skin to escape, or let Dumbledore hex him into a catatonic state? _Seriously?_

He caught the distant echo of voices along the marble-lined hallway—or thought he did—and threw a terrified look at Dumbledore. “Do it. Do the spell.”

Dumbledore nodded once and drew his wand. With a single twitch of it, he banished the lunch tray. “Lie down and make yourself comfortable.”

Climbing beneath the blankets, Draco scrunched down to lay his head on the pillow, then, after a moment’s thought, rolled onto his side and snuggled deeper under the covers.

“Excellent. Now, relax. Close your eyes.”

“I want to see,” Draco whispered.

“You’ll be able to open them, with a little effort, but let’s start with them closed.”

Draco obediently shut his eyes. He felt a hand come to rest on his shoulder, then magic washed over him. He instantly felt as if something very soft and very heavy had wrapped around his body, nearly smothering him. Everything went fuzzy. Sounds were muffled. His breathing and heartbeat slowed. He tried to move his hand, but his body was no longer attached to his brain and totally ignored his instructions. Something stirred inside him—something that might have been panic—but the smothering weight squashed it before it could do more than twitch, and Draco was left with nothing but endless, warm, sleepy contentment.

Then he heard the voices.

“A few minutes, no more.” If he were capable of rational thought, he’d recognize that voice as Madam Pomfrey’s. In his current state, it was just a blur of words.

“You told us that his condition was not serious, Dumbledore.” Was that his mother? Must be… talking velvet ice sculpture, that was Mother…

“It won’t be, if we follow Madam Pomfrey’s instructions.”

“Then why the stasis charm? That seems extreme for a few bruises.”

A cool hand touched Draco’s forehead, smoothing his hair. He struggled to pry up his eyelids. After a few attempts, he managed to drag them up and blink his vision into focus. A familiar shape bent over him, peering into his half-lidded eyes.

“Hello, Draco, darling.”

 _Mother_ , he tried to say. Nothing came out. His lips wouldn’t move. _Go away. Take him away._

“He suffered a severe head injury.” Pomfrey again, playing the Healer. Well, in fairness, she wasn’t playing. “He woke up and showed signs of recovery, then he became extremely agitated. I had to place the stasis charm on him to keep him from re-injuring himself.”

“Agitated about what?” Draco knew that voice, too. It started the panic clawing at him, too strong even for the spell that bound him. His breathing hitched and his eyelids fluttered as he tried to find the source.

_Go away. Go away. Don’t touch me. Don’t look at me. Somebody make him go away…_

No one could hear the shrieking in his head. They just went on talking, as if he were no more than a wrinkle in the sheets instead of a living, breathing person lying in front of them.

“He wasn’t rational,” Pomfrey answered. “I couldn’t make sense of it.”

“It seems he was worried about completing a school project.” That was Dumbledore at his most guileless. Sneaky sodding bastard. “So worried that he tried to leave the hospital wing while disoriented and too weak to walk. When Madam Pomfrey tried to restrain him, he grew so frantic that she feared he would harm himself.”

“I don’t understand,” his mother said. “Certainly no professor would punish him for missing an assignment when he’s hospitalized with serious injuries.”

“Of course not. In fact, we don’t know what project he is so concerned about. His professors are as baffled as we are by his behavior.”

Someone gave a bark of sour laughter. “Hardly baffled. We’ve all seen this before. And it started long before his housemates decided to cave in his skull.”

“What do you mean, Severus?” Mother again, sounding worried. Her hand still stroked Draco’s hair, but she wasn’t looking down at him, so she didn’t see the message in his eyes.

_Don’t ask, Mother. You don’t want to know. You don’t want to be here._

Snape answered her. “He’s been tormenting himself for months. Since the start of the term. Not eating or sleeping properly, avoiding his friends, dropping off the Quidditch team, obsessing over his work to the exclusion of all else. It’s affected his health and caused a lot of talk around the common room. That’s most likely why a group of Slytherins went after him the way they did. They suspected he was up to something, not recognizing the signs of extreme emotional stress.”

“Are you saying that Draco is having some kind of breakdown?”

“I’m saying that he’s killing himself over his bloody NEWTs. It happens when students start their sixth year studies and realize what’s ahead of them. Or when their parents put too much pressure on them,” Snape added harshly.

“This is unconscionable.” There it was again. That Voice. Draco tried to fight down the panic and retreat into the comfortable numbness of the stasis charm, but his pounding heart wouldn’t cooperate. “You allow my son to deteriorate mentally and physically under your very noses, stand by while other students attack him, then accuse us of mistreating him?”

“You saw him over the holidays. Did he look healthy to you?” If Draco didn’t know better—if his entire brain hadn’t been turned to mush by the stasis charm—he’s swear that Severus Sodding Snape was genuinely concerned about him. “Did you ask him how his studies were going or remind him that he had two full years to prepare for the exams? Did you tell him you’d still respect him if he didn’t get top marks in every class? Did you even _notice_ what state he was in?”

The hand on Draco’s hair began to tremble. “If he’s as ill as you say, perhaps we should move him to St. Mungo’s. Or bring him home for a nice rest.”

 _No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no!_ Draco howled in his head, where no one could hear him. He stiffened, twitched, tried to shake off his mother’s hand and the stasis spell at once, but only succeeded in nearly choking on his own fear.

“He shouldn’t be moved,” Madam Pomfrey said firmly. “That’s the whole point of the stasis charm.”

“I’m sure the Healers at St. Mungo’s will know how to move him without further injury. In any case, I won’t have him in this castle with those hoodlums.”

“The students who attacked him are being dealt with,” Dumbledore said. “They will be punished for their actions, and we’ll take steps to ensure that they can’t harm Mr. Malfoy again. The truth is, we don’t think they were actually trying to hurt him. Draco had a kind of fit, probably due to his weakened physical state, and they panicked. They thought they would be blamed for his illness and reacted to protect themselves.”

“By assaulting a student who was, as you say, _having a fit?_ ”

“I’m not defending their actions, Narcissa, merely telling you what we believe happened. The boys responsible will be punished.”

“Why haven’t they been punished already?”

“Because we were waiting to see how serious Draco’s injuries are and to speak to him about the events. Now that we have a clearer picture, we’ll come up with a suitable response.”

“I’m still not satisfied. I don’t want him in this castle.”

“Let’s not be hasty, Narcissa.” The words came from the very last person Draco had expected.

“Lucius, you can’t be…”

“If Snape and Dumbledore are right, Draco is upset about his studies, so taking him out of school in the middle of term will only upset him more. We need to keep him calm. Help him recover. That means, leaving him here where he belongs and letting him complete his work.”

Draco saw the shock in his mother’s face and felt a little ball of warmth form in the pit of his stomach. She didn’t know.

Lucius went on in his smoothest Politician voice, “I’m sure Madam Pomfrey will see him through this little incident, and a few days of rest will do him good. How long do you expect to keep him under the stasis charm?”

“Another day or two,” Pomfrey answered, “then some restoring potions to get his strength up. He should be well enough to return to his dormitory by the end of the week.”

“The stasis charm really is just a precaution, then,” his mother said, her voice oddly wistful. Almost as if she were begging for reassurance, except that Malfoys never begged for anything. “He’s not seriously ill?”

“Not now that we’re aware of the problem, but we must all be vigilant to see that he doesn’t end up in this condition again.”

“If Dumbledore keeps those boys away from him…” Lucius began.

“We all will,” Snape growled, cutting him off, “but they are his friends and housemates. It will be hard to keep them apart. And if I were you, I’d be asking myself why a group of boys who have been Draco’s friends since birth suddenly turned on him like that.”

“What are you suggesting, Severus?” The arctic note in his father’s voice made Draco devoutly grateful that he couldn’t see his face.

“Only that you might learn a thing or two by talking to their parents.”

“I certainly will,” Lucius said through his teeth.

“And _I_ suggest that you all take this conversation elsewhere,” Madam Pomfrey said severely. “Malfoy needs his rest.”

Draco saw his mother’s eyes fix on him. He knew that he ought to recognize her expression, but he couldn’t bring his thoughts into focus well enough to do so. He gazed up at her, silently pleading with her to listen to Pomfrey and get his father out of there.

She petted his hair, smiled her sweetly distant smile, and bent to brush his forehead with her lips. “Rest now, my darling. That’s all you need to do.”

She kissed him again, then stepped away. A new figure loomed up over him, and his father’s face swam into view. Draco stiffened. He tried to pull away but the charm held him. Panic rose again to choke him. Then, suddenly, a hand fell on his shoulder and warmth flooded him, unknotting his muscles, driving away his fear. He couldn’t see the owner of the hand—it came from behind him—but he recognized the magic in it by now. Dumbledore.

“We’ll be back for a visit when you’re feeling better, Draco,” Lucius said, “and we’ll see about those _friends_ of yours. You needn’t worry about them.”

 _Just about_ your _friends,_ Draco thought, but as usual, his father couldn’t see past his pale, pretty face and accepted his silence as obedience.

He didn’t touch Draco, just gazed down at him with those grey eyes that were so like Draco’s own, and so unlike. Then he nodded and turned away, catching Narcissa’s arm to guide her around the bed. Draco heaved an inward sigh of relief, then felt a wash of cold over his skin as Dumbledore’s hand left him.

“If you’d like to join me in my office,” the Headmaster was saying, his voice retreating down the ward with the sound of booted feet on marble.

Madam Pomfrey was suddenly in front of Draco, filling his limited field of vision. Her hand touched his head, and while it didn’t bring the warmth of Dumbledore’s, it steadied him. She gazed straight into his eyes and lifted a finger to her lips, warning him to be still—not that he could move or speak if he wanted to.

The seconds ticked by. Silence closed over the ward, taut and listening. Draco’s muscles began to ache with the strain of pushing against the stasis charm. Then, quite suddenly, Dumbledore was back.

He strode around the screen and up to the bed, saying curtly, “They’re safely away.”

“I was afraid you’d have to ply them with tea and excuses to get rid of them,” Pomfrey said.

“Severus is doing the honors. Fetch Harry, would you, Poppy? And something to settle Mr. Malfoy’s nerves.”

Pomfrey didn’t answer, but she stepped quickly out of view to be replaced by Dumbledore. He held his wand in his undamaged hand and looked at Draco with his usual piercing gaze. A smile tilted his bearded lips.

“I’m going to break the spell. You should expect a bit of a reaction, considering the stress of that meeting, but Madam Pomfrey will give you a potion to counteract it. Here we go.”

Dumbledore touched him with his wand, and Draco felt an incredible, shattering inrush of emotion. His body unlocked, his lungs sobbed for air, his heart tried to leap out of his chest, and a blinding pain ignited behind his eyes.

“ _Bloody hell!_ ” he gasped, twisting to huddle against the mattress and bury his face in the pillow.

“Quite,” Dumbledore said, a glimmer of sympathetic humor in his voice. His hand clasped Draco’s shoulder, steadying him, and his voice continued to slide over him in a soothing way. “Steady now, my boy, just breathe. You’re quite safe. It’s only your body’s attempt to escape a perceived threat when you weren’t able to move that’s causing you distress. Breathe through it and you’ll be fine.”

“Draco!”

Draco turned his head to see Harry come flying around the screen, his stockinged feet sliding on marble tiles, his hair standing up in agitated clumps. He tried to push himself up on an elbow, and Dumbledore shifted his grip to help him. Draco sat up just in time for Harry to land on the mattress beside him and wrap him up in both arms.

“Are you all right? What did they do? They aren’t going to take you away, are they?” the Gryffindor babbled frantically.

“No. I’m fine. I just… need a minute,” Draco murmured into Harry’s neck. He was still shaking, his heart still pounding and his head still splitting, but the physical panic reaction was already fading. Harry was all the healing he needed.

“Drink this, Malfoy.”

He eased his head up and cracked open his eyes to see Pomfrey standing over him with a goblet in her hands. “‘M okay,” he mumbled.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I know a headache when I see one, and you’ve got a regular skull-splitter. Drink your potion, then lie down and close your eyes. You’ll be right as rain after a bit of sleep.”

“What’d they do to him?” Harry demanded, as he watched Draco swallow the contents of the goblet.

“Nothing,” Dumbledore said. “He’s having a reaction to the stasis charm.”

“Stasis charm? What stasis charm? And why would that make him sick? I thought Healers used those all the time!”

“They are a standard healing tool but are rarely used on conscious patients who can hear and process what’s going on around them. Patients are usually asleep the whole time they’re under the charm and awake normally, after the stasis has been removed, in a stress-free environment. Unfortunately, Mr. Malfoy did not have the luxury.”

“But I still don’t understand…”

“Stop fussing, Harry. I’m fine. Honestly.” Draco handed the empty goblet to Pomfrey and tucked his head back into the curve of Harry’s neck. His eyes drooped closed. He inhaled the familiar scents of Harry Potter and hospital-wing flannel, and a smile tilted his lips.

Harry pushed the hair back from Draco’s face and cradled his head protectively. “Will you at least tell me if it worked? Are they gone?” He said ‘they’ as if the word tasted foul.

“Professor Snape is seeing them off. And yes, our ruse worked. Draco’s parents believe that he’s been held under a stasis charm to protect him after his head injury.”

“And they actually let him stay here, after his own housemates tried to kill him?” Harry sounded incredulous and Draco didn’t blame him. It was kind of hard to believe.

When Dumbledore answered, the tone of his voice was so deliberately flat, so obviously false, that Draco had to get a look at him and cracked open his eyes. The look on Dumbledore’s face made him shudder. “Lucius Malfoy trusts me to protect his son and believes that he will recover better in familiar surroundings.”

Harry snorted at that. “Like hell he does!”

“Now, now, Harry.” Dumbledore didn’t smile, but some of the cold rigidity left his face. He looked human again. “Mind your language.”

“Fuck that.” Dumbledore’s brows rose alarmingly and the first hint of a smile tilted his lips. “Lucius Malfoy doesn’t give a fuck about Draco’s recovery. If he wants him at Hogwarts, it’s for his own reasons.”

“Well, duh,” Draco murmured into Harry’s neck.

Harry laughed, his anger vanishing as quickly as it had come. “Did you just say ‘duh’?”

“Excuse me. I meant… Brilliant deduction, Potter.”

He laughed again, more easily, and petted Draco’s hair in a way that made the Slytherin want to purr and wrap himself around his taller body. “You must be feeling better.”

“Better but sleepy. I think Madam Pomfrey spiked my potion.”

“I most certainly did,” Pomfrey said crisply. “I want you to _sleep._ Potter, you’re welcome to stay, but only if you behave yourself.”

“We’ll leave you both to get some rest,” Dumbledore said, motioning for Pomfrey to join him at the foot of the bed. “Harry, this is your last night in the hospital wing. You need to get back to your dormitory and back to work, now that Draco is on the mend. Draco, I’ll plan to remove the block on your magic tomorrow and you can return to your dormitory on the following day, assuming that Madam Pomfrey gives you a clean bill of health. We’ll talk tomorrow, while it’s still safe.”

With a nod and a smile, he left, sweeping Pomfrey out ahead of him.

Harry waited until their footsteps had faded away, then he bent to speak into Draco’s hair. “We need to talk, too.”

“I know. After this bloody potion wears off.”

“Are you trying to weasel out of telling me what’s going on?”

“No.” Draco yawned widely and burrowed his face deeper into the curve of Harry’s neck. “Can’t talk, now… Brain gone to mush…”

Harry rolled his eyes and scrunched down onto the mattress, carrying Draco with him. When they were lying together under the blankets, snuggled as close to each other as the laws of physics would allow, Harry murmured in Draco’s ear, “Tonight I’m going to get you really alone and we’re going to talk. Among other things.”

“Mm,” was Draco’s only answer. He heard the words and mostly understood them, but he was too sleepy even to register the burn of desire that went through him at the mention of _other things_. He smiled against the warm skin of Harry’s throat, pressed a kiss to it, and sank gratefully into the warm darkness.

 

*** *** ***

 

“Ow! _Fuck!_ ”

“Shh! They’ll hear you.”

“ _Who_ will hear me? There’s no one fucking _here!_ Can we just take off the cloak, already?”

“No. Hang on… let me put my arm around you… Don’t tangle your legs up in it, you prat!”

“Oh, for Fuck’s sake…”

“Since when do you swear with every other word?”

“Since every other bone in my body hurts and I want to _stop!_ Just stop, Harry.”

Draco came to a halt in the middle of the fifth floor corridor, forcing Harry to stop with him or walk away with the invisibility cloak. The two boys stood very close together with Harry’s arm around Draco’s waist, half holding him up and half keeping him beneath the silvery folds of the cloak. Draco sighed wearily and leaned into the taller boy’s side.

“How much farther?” the Slytherin grumbled.

“I can see Boris up ahead. We’re almost there. You know, Malfoy, if you get this tired just walking up a few flights of stairs to the bathroom, you’re never going to make it from the dungeons to your classes.”

“It’s not climbing the stairs. It’s tripping over your bloody feet and getting myself snarled up in your infernal cloak.”

“Come on.” Harry tightened his hold on the other boy’s waist, tucking him into his side and bearing more of his weight. “A good soak will make you feel better.”

As they started down the empty corridor again, Draco remarked sourly, “If all you wanted was a soak in the bath, we could’ve stayed in the hospital wing.”

“Dumbledore said you need exercise. And no, you incredible git, I don’t just want a soak in the bath. I want you to myself for awhile— _really_ to myself—though I’m having trouble remembering _why_ at this particular moment.”

Draco chuckled, pleased with himself. Harry was snapping again, instead of petting and coddling him. That was good.

They reached the statue of Boris the Bewildered and went past it to the fourth door.

“What’s the password?” Harry whispered.

“How the fuck should I know?”

“You’re a Prefect, you git.”

“I haven’t used this bathroom all term.”

“You’re just being difficult, Malfoy.”

Draco sighed dramatically. He was just being difficult. He _enjoyed_ being difficult when it meant needling Harry until he rolled his eyes and smirked and threw digs at him in that familiar way. Almost like old times. Almost as if his father had never…

No, he wasn’t going there. Dumbledore had kept his magic blocked, which meant Voldemort couldn’t hear what he was thinking, which meant he could act like a normal sixteen-year-old boy for this night, at least. He didn’t have to think about all the dreadful things that had happened to him over the last few months. He didn’t have to do equations in his head to suppress his feelings. He didn’t have to push Harry away.

Surrendering to the impulse, he slipped a hand behind Harry’s head and pulled him down for a kiss. Harry was startled, but he didn’t put up a fight, and Draco let himself savor the taste of the other boy’s lips for a long minute. When Harry finally broke the kiss, Draco gave a hum of pleasure and nuzzled at his throat.

“Wronski Feint,” he mumbled into the underside of Harry’s jaw.

“Huh?”

“The password, you berk.”

“Hmm.” Harry angled his head, encouraging Draco to do more interesting things with his mouth, and said, “Why didn’t the door open, then?”

“Duh. No magic.”

“Oh, right. Did you just say ‘duh’ again?”

“I did. Now open the fucking door.”

“You’re funny when you’re tired and sore and swearing a blue streak.”

“I’m glad you find my distress so amusing. Open the _fucking_ _door_.”

“Half a mo’…” Harry turned and lowered his head, capturing Draco’s lips in another teasing kiss. When his tongue slipped out to caress the Slytherin’s lips, urging them to part, Draco responded by wrapping both arms around Harry’s waist and leaning into him. After weeks of reining in their lust, the kiss quickly consumed them both, until they were straining into it and pressing their bodies desperately together. The flannel of their trousers did nothing to hide what was going on underneath it.

Draco was aching with the need to feel Harry’s naked body against his, Harry’s hands and lips on his skin, and was about to tear off the other boy’s pajamas right there in the hallway—they had an invisibility cloak to hide under, after all—when Harry abruptly pulled away from him.

“ _Wronski Feint!_ ” the Gryffindor gasped, even as Draco uttered a growl of frustration and knotted his fists in the front of Harry’s shirt to pull him close again.

The door beside them swung open. Harry nearly lifted Draco’s feet off the floor in his hurry to get him across the threshold. Neither boy bothered to look around them at the beautiful, elegant, sparklingly white bathroom, too besotted with the view right in front of their eyes. Harry kicked the door shut and threw the bolt without tearing his gaze from Draco’s face. Then he cast a few spells at it, just for good measure, and tugged the invisibility cloak off of their intertwined bodies.

“Oooh, Harry!” a fluttery voice cooed, even as Harry moved to capture Draco’s lips again.

Harry’s head snapped to the side, his mouth open in shock. Draco followed his gaze to find a sullen, spotty, bespectacled girl floating above the empty bath, staring at them with gloating horror on her insubstantial face.

“What the…” he started but Harry overrode him.

“Hullo, Myrtle.”

Draco felt the lovely, promising erection pressed against his belly begin to shrink.

Fuck.

He scowled at the intrusive ghost but said nothing. Harry could deal with this. He apparently knew this Myrtle.

“Hello, Harry,” Myrtle simpered. “Are you being naughty?”

“No. Just having a bath.”

“That’s not what it looks like from here.” She smiled, and Draco couldn’t honestly say that the change improved her face any. “It looks to me like you’re snogging another boy, which is _definitely_ naughty!”

“Not at all.” Harry straightened and turned to face Myrtle directly, one arm still looped around Draco’s waist. “This is Draco. He’s my boyfriend. Draco, this is Myrtle. She usually lives in the third-floor girls’ bathroom, but sometimes she stops by here. She helped me solve a puzzle for the Tri-Wizard Tournament.”

“Right here in this very bathtub,” Myrtle agreed coyly.

Draco nodded dubiously at the giggling ghost. He supposed she would be blushing, if her cheeks were solid enough for that. She was certainly throwing him the most nauseating glances from behind her thick glasses.

“Harry and I are old friends,” Myrtle said coquettishly. Then she abruptly shifted to a pout. “But not good enough friends for him to tell me that he had a boyfriend.”

“We haven’t told anyone,” Harry said in his most persuasive voice—the ‘hero’ voice that made Draco want to hex him. “It’s a tremendous secret, Myrtle, so you have to promise faithfully to keep it for us.”

“Why? Oooh, you _are_ being naughty!”

“We’re not, Myrtle, honestly. It’s just…” Draco could almost feel Harry weighing his options, trying to decide how best to tip the scales in their favor, “…if anyone finds out about me and Draco, he’ll be in danger. They’ll want to punish him for daring to be with me.”

Draco flinched at that, but Harry obviously knew what he was doing, because Myrtle responded perfectly. Her eyes flew wide and her mouth formed an ‘O’ of horror. “Bullies,” she breathed, “I _hate_ bullies!”

Harry pressed home his advantage without hesitation. “Yes, in fact, he’s only just out of hospital after some bullies got hold of him.”

Myrtle was actually crying now—crying over Draco Sodding Malfoy, the biggest bully in the school—with big, ghostly tears streaming down her cheeks and spattering her glasses. “That’s awful! Oh, Harry!” she sobbed.

“So, you see, it’s terribly important that you keep our secret, Myrtle.”

“Of course I do! Oh, _Harry!_ ”

Harry finally looked a bit embarrassed at the deluge his emotional manipulation had unleashed, his cheeks flushing adorably. “Well, it was actually Draco who got beaten up, you know. Not me.”

For a hideous moment, Draco thought the lachrymose ghost was going to embrace him. Luckily for both of them, since this could only end badly, she chose instead to let out a howl of distress and swoop up into the nearest tap. Harry and Draco could hear her keening somewhere back in the pipes, occasionally breaking off to wail their names.

They exchanged a wide-eyed look. Myrtle’s voice got fainter and fainter until, with a final plaintive promise to be _ever so good_ , it died out.

Draco blinked at Harry. Harry grinned ruefully at Draco.

“What was that all about?” the Slytherin demanded.

“It’s a long story.” Harry dropped the arm that held Draco and moved up to the enormous, swimming pool-sized bath. “A very long story that’ll keep for another time.” He scratched his head in consternation, eyeing the vast array of taps. “What sort of bubbles would you like?”

“That yellow one smells nice.” Draco pointed to a tap with an opaque yellow jewel set in its handle.

“What is it?” Harry asked, as he obediently cranked on the tap. Water and thick, velvety bubbles poured out of it. A soft, warm, faintly woody scent filled the air.

“I don’t know, but I like it.”

“Mm.” Harry inhaled and smiled wistfully at him. The sweetness of that smile made Draco want to grab him and kiss him and drag him down onto the floor to have his way with him. “Smells like we’re out in the woods on a sunny day.”

Draco took a step toward Harry, driven by the ache in his body to touch him. Harry met him halfway, slipping his arms around Draco and pulling him close. Draco looked up at the taller boy with smokey eyes.

“Did Myrtle completely ruin the mood?”

Harry laughed. “What do you think?” he teased, pushing his hips forward to rub his hardening cock against Draco’s stomach. “Let’s get in the bath. That way, if she comes back, the bubbles will give us a bit of privacy.”

“Except, of course, that she can dive under them.”

“Now who’s ruining the mood?”

Draco laughed, low and soft, enjoying the feel of it in his throat. Then he gently disentangled himself from Harry’s arms and turned away to unbutton his shirt.

He felt oddly self-conscious as he stripped off his pajamas. He could feel Harry’s eyes on his back, staring at his ugly scars, counting his ribs through his too-pale skin, and he flushed under their gaze. Folding his pajamas, he laid them neatly to one side. Then he turned to approach the bath.

 _Harry wants me_ , he told himself firmly, his eyes on the other boy and his cheeks stained with a faint, delicate color. _He doesn’t care about the scars or Greyback or the other men who’ve had me. He wants me anyway._

Harry already stood in the water with the thick, creamy bubbles up around his ribs. He held up a hand to Draco, smiling as if he hadn’t seen the scars or Draco’s blush.

“Jump in.”

Draco clasped the offered hand and stepped off the edge, plunging into deep water. Heat and bubbles closed over his head. His feet hit the marble bottom, and his legs folded, absorbing the shock. Then he sprang upward, shooting back out into the open air and into Harry’s waiting arms before he had a chance to push the streaming hair from his eyes.

Their bodies slid deliciously together, slick with soap and tingling with the heat of the bath. Draco felt Harry’s swollen cock stroke up his belly as he settled back onto his feet, and he shivered, pressing more tightly to the other boy. Then Harry’s lips were on his, Harry’s tongue was in his mouth, Harry’s arms were lifting him up higher, deeper into the kiss. Draco wrapped his legs around Harry’s waist and groaned into his mouth when he felt their erections rub together.

“I’ve missed you so much,” Harry murmured against Draco’s lips.

“Me, too.”

“I want to take you apart.”

“I can tell.”

“So if you’re going to tell me it isn’t safe…”

“Shag me, already.”

“You’ve got to be sure, Dragon.” He broke the kiss, suddenly far too serious and more than a little nervous. “You’ve got to be _absolutely sure,_ because if you kiss me like that one more time…”

Draco growled at him, nipped at his lower lip, and snapped, “Shut it and _shag me_ , you git!”

Harry laughed, down low in his chest and bit Draco right back, making his lip swell and throb deliciously.With Draco still wrapped around him, he staggered over to the marble shelf that ringed the pool and collapsed onto it. They fell together—Harry lying back with his head on the bath’s edge and bubbles up around his chin, Draco sprawled on his chest, astride his lap—kissing as though their very lives depended on it. Weeks of pent-up lust ignited in an instant, and Draco was nearly sobbing with need by the time Harry’s hands clasped his hips. Lifted him. Stroked him. Readied him. Nudged his slick, swollen head against Draco’s opening and held him there, poised and panting.

“Do it!” he groaned.

Harry laughed again—more of a growl, really, like a wild beast guarding its kill—and guided Draco down onto his shaft.

The first thrust was long and slow and smooth. It seemed to go on forever until it threatened to tear his body and soul in half. Draco threw his head back and moaned, unable to hold in the sound of his ecstasy any longer. Then, as his arse finally came to rest on Harry’s thighs, his head fell forward and his eyes fluttered open to meet the fierce green ones blazing up at him.

“Fuck, you’re beautiful,” Harry whispered roughly.

Draco stared down at him, face flushed and eyes starred with delight. “Take me apart, Harry.”

Harry growled again, still more possessively, and dragged Draco down to him with a fist in his hair. Fastening his lips to the Slytherin’s enticingly white neck, he sucked a wicked bruise into it, making Draco shudder and cry out, hands opening and closing helplessly on his shoulders. Then he muttered against the tingling flesh, “Ride me.”

Draco obeyed without hesitation. He knelt on the hard marble, thighs spread till his muscles trembled and burned, fingers knotted in the other boy’s hair for balance, and rode Harry’s cock as hard and expertly as any broomstick. Harry bruised him with his fingers, pounded him with his hips, bit at his neck and sucked at his nipples until he cried out in desperation.

“Ah! _Fuck! Harry!_ ”

Harry’s only answer was to grab Draco’s arse and pull him down hard on his cock, while his body arched up off the bench and convulsed with the power of his release. Draco saw Harry let go—saw his eyelids flutter and his mouth fall open, felt the spurt of warmth deep inside him—and, in the next breath, pitched over the edge himself. Waves of pleasure slammed into him, closed over his head, swamped his senses. He cried out like a drowning man and crumpled against the larger body beneath his, clinging to it for dear life, while he thrust uncontrollably against the other boy’s stomach and pumped hot, slick juices over them both.

The waves never seemed to stop, and he was sobbing by the time Harry’s arms closed around him, calming his shudders.

“Fuck!” he gasped into Harry’s shoulder, as yet another tremor gripped him.

“Yeah…” Harry drew in a long, shaking breath and blew it out on a tremendous sigh that seemed to deflate him. “Fuck, yeah.”

“I can’t…” Draco made an abortive attempt to shift his weight onto his knees, then collapsed onto Harry again, groaning, “Fuck. I can’t move…”

“So don’t. You’ve got nowhere better to be.”

“Fuck,” Draco declared, once more for good measure. “I think you blew out half my brain.”

“The half that housed your vocabulary, apparently.”

He laughed, the sound muffled in the curve of Harry’s neck. “Look who’s talking!”

Harry chuckled. “Neither of us.”

At that, they both dissolved into slightly hysterical laughter. Draco clung to Harry, giggling until tears started in his eyes, and just when it seemed he’d be able to master himself, the other boy gasped, “ _Fuck!_ ” and set them both off again.

“Use your words, Potter!” he chided, when he could get enough oxygen to speak.

“‘Fuck’ is a word,” Harry retorted, and they fell apart laughing again.

Finally, Draco called himself to order and pushed himself upright on Harry’s lap. At the shift in position, he realized that Harry was still buried to the hilt inside him. And still hard. He rocked his hips suggestively, catching his breath at the way Harry’s cock pulled at his tender flesh, and quirked an eyebrow at the other boy.

“Ready again so soon?”

“I never stopped being ready.”

“How is that even possible? Are you using magic?”

“I don’t need magic with you. Especially when I haven’t had you for weeks and weeks and weeks…” The laughter in his face morphed into something hotter, more urgent and demanding, and he gripped the back of Draco’s neck to pull him closer. “I need more of you,” he breathed against Draco’s lips. “I need to hear you scream my name when you come.”

“Fuck,” Draco whispered, lapsing back into braindead idiocy in a blink.

“Yup.” Surging to his feet, Harry wrapped Draco’s legs firmly around his waist, then he turned to kneel on the marble seat. Tilting Draco back until his shoulders rested on the edge of the pool, he ordered, “Hold on.”

Draco spread his arms out to either side, clutching at the rim of the pool, and leaned his head back in surrender. He could feel Harry’s eyes on him and the coiled power in the other boy’s body, the building fury, and he shivered. He started to pant. His belly tightened and, impossibly, his cock lifted. Then Harry slammed into him and forced a long, guttural cry from his throat.

This time, Draco had no volition, no part in what was done to him. He simply lay there, stretched between the edge of the pool and Harry’s thrusting hips, groaning his pleasure and begging wordlessly for more. He came first—Harry made sure of it—and screamed his lover’s name as he did. Harry was only a heartbeat behind him, and he pulled Draco up into his arms to ride out the aftershocks with him. Then they settled onto the marble seat and sank up to their chins in the hot, soapy, scented water, exhausted and sated and, for a time, willing just to hold each other.

Harry sat with his back to the wall and Draco leaning back against his chest, tucked between his spread knees. Draco let his head fall into the taller boy’s shoulder and closed his eyes. He was completely unstrung—arms too heavy to move, legs aching with strain, arse burning in a way that made him smile to himself.

It had been too long. Far, far too long. How had he survived weeks without this? Without Harry?

He wanted to shudder at the thought, but that would mean throwing off his delicious lethargy to brood again, and that would be a shameful waste of a truly transcendent fuck. So instead, he turned to bring his lips to the base of Harry’s throat and nibbled it gently.

“Who’s going to say it first?” he murmured in his most velvet tones.

“Huh?” Harry ran caressing hands down Draco’s arms, stroking the soap bubbles over them. “Say what?”

Draco drew in an unsteady breath, laughter already tickling his throat, and whispered, “ _Fuck._ ”

“Shut it, you git!”

Harry, too, was fighting laughter, but it was easier this time when they were both so drained. After a few chuckles, they quieted, and Harry took up stroking Draco’s skin again, either intent on getting him clean or too enamored of the feel of it to keep his hands to himself. Not that Draco wanted him to keep his hands to himself. He was almost purring with satisfaction when Harry suddenly clasped his right hand and lifted it out of the water.

Draco blinked his eyes fully open to watch the other boy’s fingers turn his hand, examine it, probe it with questioning fingers. “What’s wrong?” he finally asked.

“The spell is in your hand, isn’t it? The one you’re so afraid of? It ties you to Voldemort somehow.”

Draco hesitated for half a second, then said, “Yes.”

“But Dumbledore blocked your magic and cut the tie. That’s why it hasn’t been hurting you and why you… why you weren’t afraid to be with me tonight. Voldemort can’t hear us when your magic is blocked.”

“Yes.”

“So, it’s safe for us to talk.”

Draco sighed. “Yes.”

Harry paused, waiting, then said with an edge of impatience to his voice, “Are you going to make me drag every detail out of you, or are you just going _tell_ me?” When Draco still did not answer, he added, “You promised to tell me everything, Dragon.”

“I know.”

“I’ve tried to be patient. I waited while you recovered from your head injury and slept off your potions and plotted with Dumbledore. Now I want to know. _Everything._ ”

It was true. He had promised, and it was past time that he kept that promise. He had no more excuses.

So Draco told him everything.

He told him about the week of false peace, when he had hidden in his room, hoping his parents would forget his existence. He told him about the moment that peace was shattered, when his father marched him down to the vault and handed him over to Voldemort under the eyes of the Death Eaters. He told him about the Unbreakable Vow and Greyback and his lesson in humility. He told him about waking up, naked and bleeding and sick, in his own bed, only to have his father usher in a buyer—his very first buyer, from the greenhouse—who tied him down and fucked him ’til he passed out from the pain, then left him there, tied naked to his own bedposts, for the house-elves to find.

“That was the first one he ever brought to my room. To my bed,” Draco whispered, eyes closed against the memory and head tilted back into Harry’s shoulder. “I couldn’t sleep in it after that. I spent every night in an armchair.”

“The first one,” Harry rasped out, his voice rough with the tears he’d wept silently into Draco’s hair almost since he’d started talking. He’d known better than to interrupt, no matter how angry he was, but he couldn’t hold in all his rage and pain. So he’d tightened his hold on Draco until his ribs creaked and let the furious tears stream down his cheeks without saying a word. Now his throat was so swollen that he could barely get the words out. “He brought others.”

“He had to. I didn’t leave my room for the rest of the hols. I was afraid, if my mother saw me, she’d…” He broke off and swallowed.

Harry ducked his head to whisper in Draco’s ear, “She would’ve seen it, Dragon. She would’ve helped you.”

“Maybe she would have tried. And maybe the Dark Lord would have punished her, like he’s punishing me.”

Harry had nothing to say to this, so he pressed a kiss to Draco’s temple and rested a cheek on his hair.

For a long minute, neither of them spoke. Then Harry murmured, “Voldemort used the Vow to torture you in the dungeons, didn’t he?”

Draco nodded. “He’s getting impatient. He knows I’m not really trying.”

“Trying to what?”

“Follow his orders.”

“What orders?”

Draco hesitated, torn between the desire to tell Harry the truth and cold terror at the thought of what he would do with that knowledge. In the end, fear won out. “I can’t tell you.”

Harry bolted upright and caught Draco’s shoulders, turning the smaller boy forcibly around to face him. “Dragon, you promised!”

“I’m telling you everything that I possibly can, Harry, I swear. But this… if you knew, you’d either try to help me or to stop me, and either way, you’d end up getting us both killed.”

“I don’t accept that,” Harry said flatly. “I’m not a fool. I know that Vow gives Voldemort the power to kill you, if you don’t do what he wants, but there has to be a way around it. And maybe, if I know what he’s forcing you to do, I can help you find that way!”

“You can’t.” Draco rested a hand against his cheek, willing him to understand. “You _can’t._ Please, Harry. Once Dumbledore takes the block off my magic, the Dark Lord will be able to get into my mind again, and he’ll know if you’re with me. I won’t be able to fool him for long. Just talking to you, sleeping beside you, even when I don’t say your name or look at you, is more than I can bear sometimes! It’s so hard to keep you out of my thoughts! And if you were helping me with this task…”

“Okay. I get it.” Harry laced his fingers through Draco’s, holding his hand tightly to his cheek. Then he turned and pressed a kiss to Draco’s palm. “I get it. But there has to be something I can do.”

“You can stop trying to be such a bloody hero all the time and let me handle this.”

“Hmph.”

“I’m serious, Harry. Dumbledore knows all about it, and he’s got a plan to keep me alive.” Draco hesitated, then added with more honesty than prudence, “Sort of.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing. Only, the plan is kind of half-baked, if you ask me, and he wants me to let Professor Snape help.”

“Snape!” Harry went from suspicious to outraged in the space of a breath. “That’s completely mental! You can’t trust _Snape!_ ”

“Dumbledore says he’s a spy for our side.”

“He wears the Dark Mark,” Harry said angrily. “I’ve seen it.”

“So have I.”

“And Dumbledore still thinks you can trust him?” He snorted in disgust, then began to gnaw his lip. “I know Dumbledore is brilliant and all, and I trust him with my life, but he’s got this thing about second chances. He’ll give _anyone_ a second chance, if they ask him nicely enough.”

“Like me?”

“You deserve it,” Harry growled, his expression fierce, “Snape doesn’t. I’m sorry, I know he’s your Head of House and you respect him and all, but…”

“I’m no happier about this than you are.”

“Okay.” Harry sucked in a calming breath, visibly fought down his urge to hex and kill, and lifted a hand to cradle Draco’s face. “Can you finish the task without Snape’s help?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Then, for what it’s worth, I’d stay away from him. Go to Dumbledore when you need help. Or to me. You know I’ll do anything I can for you.”

“I know.” Draco turned his lips into Harry’s palm and closed his eyes, soaking in the warmth and power of his presence.

“Dragon, how much can Voldemort really hear through that Vow?”

“Only what’s in my head.” His eyes fluttered open and lifted to see Harry frowning down at him with love and sorrow spilling out of him like tears. “He can’t hear what you say to me, but if he’s paying attention, he can hear what I say to you. And he can get into my thoughts, feel what I feel, use the spell to warn or punish me. Sometimes, he talks to me.” Draco shuddered slightly. “I heard him cast the Cruciatus.”

Harry stroked his cheek, then pushed the hair back from his face. “Is there any way to keep him out? Block your thoughts?”

“Sometimes, when I’m really desperate, I run Arithmancy equations in my head. That forces me to concentrate and not think about anything else.” He quirked a smile at Harry. “And it probably bores him to sobs.”

“But it clears your mind of useful stuff, too, like school work or conversations.”

“Nobody wants to talk to me, anyway.”

“Hey.” Harry suddenly slumped back against the poolside, gathering Draco into his arms and sandwiching him between his bent knees. “If Voldemort knows what you’re thinking and feeling, then he knows you’ve got a boyfriend at Hogwarts, right?”

“Ye-es…”

“I mean, he knows you don’t sleep alone.”

“Presumably.”

“Which also means that you could do anything you want with this boyfriend, as long as old Snake-breath doesn’t figure out who it actually is!”

“Anything I want, like run Arithmancy equations?”

“Anything you want, like shag your brains out and cuddle while you sleep.”

“Harry…”

“Think about it. As long as you don’t scream my name when you come, what’s the harm? Voldemort can’t hear _me_ , so I can talk dirty to you all night and all you have to do is keep your mouth shut at the crucial moment.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Only because you’re making it complicated.” Harry’s teasing, triumphant tone melted into softness, and he tucked Draco’s head beneath his chin in a loving, protective gesture. “I know you’re scared. So’m I. But maybe this would be easier to take, if you weren’t trying so hard to push me away. Just think about it, Dragon. Think how much better you’d sleep at night, after a nice, hard shag and a lovely snog. Not every night. Not like we did before. But every once in a while, when it feels like the entire wizarding world is out to get you and the walls are closing in.”

“You know the feeling?”

“Very well. I also know that being with you is the only thing that makes my life bearable sometimes.”

“And if I slip? If he finds out?”

“Then I’ll kill him and break the Vow before he can hurt you.”

“That easy, huh?”

“Maybe not, but so what? I’ll do whatever it takes to save you from him. And from your fucking father.”

Draco sighed and snuggled more tightly against him. “I love you, but you’re an imbecile.”

“As long as you love me,” Harry said with a chuckle. He paused, letting Draco lie quietly for a minute, then prodded, “You’ll think about it?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Good. Now wake up and climb on, Dragon. Your broomstick is ready for another ride.”

“Mmm. I do love to fly…”

**_To be continued…_ **

 


	9. Missteps, Mistrust and Another Bathroom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to rush this chapter out tonight before a heap of Real Life hits my desk tomorrow morning, so I didn't have time to edit it the way I like. I apologize in advance for any inelegant writing and typos.
> 
> Thank you all for your patience with my slow updates, and a special thank you to my loyal reviewers! Your lovely comments keep me going through the rough spots!
> 
> I hope you all enjoy the story.

 

It was after midnight when Draco left the Room of Requirement. He was cold and stiff and achingly tired, moving mechanically through the deserted castle with no thought for concealment, intent only on reaching his bed before he dropped in his tracks. Without Harry’s cloak, he was in danger of discovery by everyone from Snape or McGonagall to Filch’s mangy cat, but he didn’t honestly care. Let them find him. The worst they could do was give him detention, and right now, detention seemed like a blessed relief.

He had been working on the Vanishing Cabinet in every spare minute since his release from the hospital wing a week ago. Today he had skived off Herbology and skipped dinner, shutting himself in the Room since mid-afternoon. And for all his labors, he had accomplished nothing. Not one blessed, bloody thing. Not even managed to figure out where the cabinet’s magical workings were hidden, much less actually expose them or diagnose the problem.

At this rate, Dumbledore would die of old age before any of the Dark Lord’s minions got to him.

Draco’s hand throbbed angrily, reminding him that his master was listening and didn’t appreciate his defeatist attitude.

 _I’m trying_ , he thought, wearily. _I’d work faster if my hand didn’t hurt for five fucking minutes._

His answer was another flare of pain so fierce that it brought tears to his eyes. Apparently, five _seconds_ was too much to ask.

He sighed, blinked the hot moisture away, and began running Arithmancy equations in his head. It didn’t ease the pain, but it gave him the illusion of privacy, the equations hanging like a veil between him and Voldemort’s remorseless red eyes.

He was deep in a complex problem when he opened the door to his broom-cupboard bedroom and crawled onto the mattress. The little room was dark and Harry asleep, but the Gryffindor stirred when the mattress moved beneath him. By the time Draco had spelled the door shut, dropped his bag and kicked off his shoes, Harry was sitting up and blinking at him by the light of a single candle.

“Hmmm,” he mumbled, by way of greeting.

“Hey. Sorry I woke you.”

“’M glad you did.” Harry scrubbed a hand through his hair and yawned hugely. “Any luck?”

“No. You?”

A smile broke over Harry’s face, so bright and beautiful that it squeezed Draco’s chest with longing. “I’ve been dying for you to show up so I could tell you! It was _brilliant!_ I got the thing Dumbledore wanted and…”

Draco lifted a hand to silence him, looking away from his sunshine smile, his blazing eyes, before he betrayed himself. “Don’t.”

 _He’s listening,_ Draco wanted to add, but all he managed was a furtive glance at Harry.

“Fine!” Harry huffed, rolling his eyes. “No secrets. But you should know that we’re making progress, putting the pieces together. And Dumbledore has promised… well, never mind that.”

“I’m glad,” Draco murmured, trying to actually feel glad through the exhaustion and defeat that filled him.

“You should be. Every step closer to _him_ is a step closer to freeing you.”

Draco just grunted his understanding. Without looking at the other boy, he busied himself by peeling off his layers of clothing and folding them neatly at the foot of the bed.

“Come here.”

Draco paused in the act of unbuttoning his shirt, absorbing that instruction, considering it, rejecting it. Then he started on the button again. The bed shifted under him and he felt a presence at his back. Arms came around him. Hands clasped his, holding them still.

“Come here, Dragon.”

He almost sobbed aloud at the agonizing caress of that soft voice on his skin. He didn’t want to obey. He _couldn’t._ He couldn’t bear the warmth of Harry’s smile or the fire in his eyes or the closeness of his lips…

The hands clasped his shoulders, turned him, and he had no strength to resist.

“Close your eyes.”

His lashes fell, just as a familiar hand caught and lifted his chin. He could feel Harry’s breath on his face, followed by a gentle fingertip at the corner of his eye.

“You’ve been crying.”

He should have been annoyed at Harry for calling out his weakness, but he didn’t have the energy for it. All he managed was a shrug and a weary, “It doesn’t matter.”

“Shh,” Harry whispered from so close that Draco felt it as much as heard it, “don’t say that. Of course it matters.” He moved in closer, his lips ghosting over Draco’s, then pulled back slightly. “He’s hurting you, isn’t he?”

“I’m not working fast enough.”

The lips brushed his again—lightly, tantalizingly—sending liquid fire coursing through his veins. “Let me help.”

“Ha-” Draco began, only to be cut off by Harry’s mouth fastening to his.

The forbidden name turned to a groan, as Harry’s tongue thrust into his mouth and Harry’s arms tightened around him. He was half in the taller boy’s lap by the time they came up for air again. The Gryffindor moved to nibble at his ear, then at his throat, and Draco moaned softly.

“Let me push the walls back,” Harry murmured between delicate, licking kisses.

“I don’t think I can,” Draco whispered, even as he tilted his head back to give Harry room to work. “I almost ruined everything, just now.”

“It’ll be all right. Just keep your eyes closed.”

“H- Nnngh!” he grunted, his head falling back in still more wanton surrender.

“Shhh.”

Harry’s mouth continued to roam up and down his throat, sucking gently, nipping at the soft skin and pressing kisses into warm hollows. At the same time, his hands moved to open the buttons of Draco’s shirt, to push it back off his shoulders, to peel it off his arms. With his torso bared, Draco rested his arms on Harry’s shoulders and leaned back, opening himself to the questing mouth. Harry obliged with a line of hot, wet kisses down his chest until he found one rigid nipple. As he sucked it into his mouth, Draco gasped, arched his back, and groaned his pleasure.

Harry chuckled and pulled back just far enough to murmur, his voice rich with triumph, “I told you I could help.”

“You’re killing me.”

“No, I’m seducing you. Shut up and enjoy it.”

Draco bit his lips to hold in the name that he fairly ached to say, producing an agonized, “Mmm!” instead.

With another throaty laugh, Harry spun them both around and lowered Draco onto the bed. Then he resumed his kisses, moving down Draco’s chest to his stomach. Draco pressed his head back into the pillow, lips still caught between his teeth, eyes screwed shut and fresh tears dampening his lashes. When Harry’s fingers opened his flies and Harry’s tongue stroked him just above the elastic of his pants, his body jerked in reaction and his eyes flew open.

“Oh!”

“Keep your eyes closed,” Harry cautioned.

“I- I can’t! _Oh!_ ” he cried out again, as Harry eased down his pants and stroked him still more intimately with his tongue.

“Say ‘Oh’ all you like,” Harry advised, in between assaults on Draco with his lips and tongue, “or swear, if that works, but no names and keep your eyes closed!”

Draco obediently closed his eyes, even as he writhed against the bed and pushed his hips up to meet Harry’s hot, demanding mouth. “ _Fuck_ …”

“That’s better,” the other boy murmured against his belly.

Draco’s eyelids fluttered up and he tilted his head back to stare at the point where the wall met the ceiling. Harry was undressing him slowly, tormenting them both with the promise of what was to come. Draco felt him peel trousers and pants down over his arse, felt his fingers stroke over his curves and push between his cheeks for a brief moment. Sparks of hunger shot through him, dragging another moan from him and sending tears sliding from the corners of his eyes. Then Harry’s mouth found the rigid lump still caught in his pants and fastened over it.

A sob tore out of Draco’s throat. He arched up again, straining to meet his lover’s mouth and body, aching for him so fiercely that he thought the pain of it could drive out even Voldemort’s evil magic.

“Nngh!” he groaned. “Fuck! Fuck, H-”

“Don’t say it,” Harry chided, his head coming up sharply.

“I can’t do it! I can’t…” Draco took a ragged breath, tilted his head back another impossible inch, and moaned, “I miss your face!”

Harry froze for a moment. Draco lay trapped beneath him, shaken with equal parts longing and terror, his entire body afire with need while his mind shivered in panic and tried to hide in the darkest corner of his skull. Then the other boy moved again, sitting back on his heels.

“I’ve got an idea. Turn over.”

Helpless to resist, Draco turned. He rolled onto his left side and would have kept going, but Harry stopped him with a hand on his hip.

“Like that.”

Understanding what Harry wanted, Draco obediently settled his body into an inviting curve, knees bent and drawn up slightly, back bowed, face buried in the pillow to hide the tear tracks on his cheeks. Harry peeled off the rest of his clothing neatly and easily, then he stretched out behind Draco and brought his knees up to clasp his body.

“Good,” Harry murmured approvingly. “Now just relax and enjoy it.”

Draco did enjoy it, at first. When Harry stroked him, he sighed and purred and shuddered pleasurably under his touch, his cock leaping up in response. When Harry entered him, he moaned and arched his back, driving himself ever farther onto the familiar hardness. He loved the feel of Harry moving inside him. He never wanted it to stop. But the longer it went on, the closer Harry came to climax, the more desperately Draco wanted to see it.

He groaned—in frustration this time—and locked his hands together behind his head, shielding his face with his bent elbows, fighting the urge. Harry bit at his neck and picked up his pace, taking Draco’s posture for surrender. Another deeper groan shook him. He clenched his eyes shut, bit his lips to hold back the name poised on them, and in desperation began to run equations in his head.

It worked. The urge to turn and look at Harry—to clasp his face between his hands, to snog him senseless, to gasp his name into his hungry mouth as they came together—subsided. But even as Draco felt the need in him sink, he felt something else rise to take its place. Shame. Horror. A terrible, poisonous vision of his bedroom at the Manor and a hard-faced man looming over him.

He was back there in an instant. He was lying in his own bed, naked, shivering, sickened and humiliated, with a stranger rutting brutally in his arse. Even as his gorge rose in protest and his body shrank away from the memory violating it, he told himself that it wasn’t real. He wasn’t at the Manor, he was safe at Hogwarts. Safe with his love.

No sooner had he framed this thought than he felt the urge to turn around again—to put a name and a face to the lover using his body—and panic flared up in him. He sobbed. He shook. He tightened his grip on his head, pulling his chin down to his chest, and screwed his eyes shut against the horror. Without a name or a face, the man in his bed, in his body, might just as well have been Fenrir Greyback. What did it matter who he was when he had been reduced to a cock driving into Draco’s body and hands holding him roughly in place?

And then the litany started, the silent pleading, spooling endlessly and uselessly through his mind…

_Please, please, someone help me… make it stop… please…_

Soft and deadly, below the sound of his own voice, he heard Voldemort laughing.

 

 

When Harry was deeply asleep, Draco crawled out from beneath his arm and left the room. He took all of his belongings but did not take the invisibility cloak folded up with Harry’s robes. He felt invisible enough without it.

No one, not even Peeves, noticed him as he flitted through the deserted hallways. He reached the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy without so much as awakening a portrait and slipped into the Room of Requirement unseen. Leaving his satchel and robes by the door, he took his wand in his hand, produced a ball of blue fire to go before him, and plunged into the maze of discarded objects.

The Vanishing Cabinet was just where he’d left it, still closed, as silent and inscrutable as ever. He sat down in front of it, cross-legged on the filthy floor. He wrapped his arms around his ribcage. He tucked his chin down onto his chest so that his hair fell over his face and hid it from all the people who were not there to see. Then he wept as if his world were ending.

 

*** *** ***

 

Draco did not go back to the broom-cupboard bedroom the next day. It was Saturday, and the crowd in the Hall at breakfast was sparse, but Harry and his friends were seated at the Gryffindor table when Draco came in. He kept his head down as he walked past, only risking a sideways glance from beneath his lashes—enough to see that Harry looked tired and out of sorts—then sat himself down with his back to the Gryffindors. No one at the Slytherin table so much as looked at him, so he ate in regal isolation and left again without speaking a word to anyone.

He spent most of the day in the library, trying to catch up on his homework. Harry didn’t come looking for him. When he finally left the library, no Quidditch-callused hand reached out from under a cloak to grab him. No familiar voice hissed his name from the shadows of a hidden staircase. He was entirely alone, as he had been for so many hours.

It was mid-afternoon and far too warm a day for this time of year. Draco paused by the first window he passed to gaze out at the grounds. A group of younger students lay beside the lake, while tiny figures on broomsticks zipped above the distant Quidditch stands. A perfect day, if only… if only…

Merlin, what a pathetic excuse for a wizard he was! The fate of his family—of the entire fucking Wizarding world—was hanging in the balance, and he was sulking like a lovesick cow! Moping and pining for a boy who obviously had better things to do on this lovely, sunny, lazy day than listen to him whine!

Turning away from the view, he started walking again, though he had no idea where he was going. The last thing he wanted was to shut himself up in the Room of Requirement again, but what other option did he have? It wasn’t until he was nearly down to the entry hall that an idea occurred to him.

This was a Hogsmeade weekend. The sun was up, the weather was balmy, and the wards were open to let the students off the grounds. Which meant that Pansy, Blaise and the rest were almost certainly in the village. And with any luck, his dormitory would be empty.

Quickening his pace, Draco hurried across the marble floor of the entry hall, making for the black maw of the dungeons.

Only three boys slept in the Sixth Year dormitory now, with most of the Sixth and Seventh Year boys still under quarantine, and Draco was rarely there. He had assiduously avoided his housemates since his release from hospital, creeping into the dungeons late at night or during classes to grab what he needed from his trunk, using cleaning and grooming charms to keep himself presentable, sleeping in the cupboard he shared with Harry, and sitting alone at one end of the Slytherin table when forced to turn up for a meal. He wasn’t exactly afraid of them. They wouldn’t dare lay a finger or wand on him, after what had happened to the last group that had tried. But only a fool deliberately walked in front of a flying hex, and Draco Malfoy was no fool—a social outcast, traitor to his kind and Voldemort’s bond-slave, but no fool.

Today seemed the perfect opportunity to brave the dungeons, with most of the older students in Hogsmeade or out enjoying the weather. If he could get to his dormitory without being spotted, he could shut himself behind his bed curtains and a protection spell or two. Then, maybe, he could sleep. That’s all he needed—a bit of sleep.

The Slytherin common room was not completely empty, but the scattering of youngsters who occupied it were too small and skittish to worry about. Draco strode across the room with his head held at a haughty angle. A titchy, little Second Year stood up and called his name as he passed, clearly trying to catch his attention, but Draco just brushed past him.

“Malfoy, wait! You don’t want…”

Draco ignored the warning note in the boy’s voice and hurried into the back hallway. The door to the Sixth Year room stood ajar. Afternoon light, tinged blue-green as if shining through water, spilled out around it, along with the hum of voices. Draco slowed as he approached, moving as quietly as he could in his leather shoes, alarm prickling down his spine. He reached the door and paused with his hand on the latch to listen.

“When are you leaving?” he heard Blaise ask.

“As soon as my parents arrive in Hogsmeade. I’m not spending another night in this fucking castle.”

Draco instantly recognized Theo’s voice and felt his guts clench at the sound. If Theo was out, then the quarantine was lifted. His attackers were free. He instinctively glanced over his shoulder, but nothing moved in the dim passage behind him.

“Where will you go?” Greg asked.

“Home, of course. My father is already talking about stepping up my training. War is coming, things are about to happen, and I’m going to be a part of them instead of wasting my time here with you lot. I’m not the only one. Vaisey and Urquhart are leaving. Only you two clots are stupid enough to stay on Dumbledore’s terms.”

“And Pucey,” Blaise added calmly. “He says he wants to finish the Quidditch season.”

Theo snorted. “Too bad Snape’s already thrown him off the team.”

“Us, too,” Vince said, miserably.

“My father is livid,” Theo went on, at his haughtiest. “He says it’s inexcusable the way Dumbledore is treating us.”

“He didn’t kick us out,” Greg offered.

“And we’re supposed to thank him for that?”

“I thought he would, after what we did to Malfoy.”

“That little _cunt!_ ” Theo spat.

Draco dropped his hand and stepped back, jolted by the venom in the other boy’s voice.

“He makes me want to spew, twitching his skinny arse and turning up his nose like some kind of pureblood prince, when all the time he’s whoring for Daddy!”

“Is that why you chased him into the dungeons?” Blaise taunted softly. “To spew all over him?”

“What are you trying to say, Zabini?!”

“Only that you were awfully hot to teach Malfoy a lesson, when he hadn’t actually done anything to you.”

“He’s a fucking cunt. And he shitted on us. A real Slytherin would have settled it himself, instead of going to Dumbledore.”

A moment of silence met this outburst, then Greg ventured, “We hurt him pretty bad.”

“Yeah, well, just wait ’til he shows his face outside this castle.” Draco heard the slam of a trunk lid falling. “Then he’ll really get hurt.”

“You can’t touch him,” Vince said earnestly. “He’s doing something important for You-Know-Who, something about the war. My father said so.”

Theo snorted and drawled, “Your father is having you on. The Dark Lord doesn’t need a _whore_ to fight for him. Unless he’s looking for someone to suck Dumbledore’s cock!”

Draco choked and took another step back, fetching up against the stone wall. His knees were shaking and the blood pounding so loudly in his ears that he almost didn’t hear Vince say, “His father is making him do it.”

Another uncomfortable silence fell while they all digested this, then Greg mumbled, “I’d kill myself.”

“I’d kill my _father_ ,” Theo retorted, “and I’d bite the prick off of any man who got too close. But Malfoy likes it.”

“He doesn’t,” Vince protested, then, always unsure of himself, “Does he? How d’you know?”

There was a ripple of malicious laughter in Theo’s voice when he answered. “Because my father’s had him. Twice. And he told me Malfoy was begging for it.”

A whimper rose in Draco’s throat and he bit down on the heel of his hand to muffle it.

“Bloody hell!” Vince sounded like he was about to be sick. “That’s… I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t.”

“Who? _Malfoy?_ ”

“Your dad!”

“Well, he did. He wanted a hold on Mr. Lord of the Manor Lucius Fucking Malfoy, so he gave it to his precious son up the arse.”

“Mine, too,” Greg whispered, his voice edged with horror, “only I don’t think it had anything to do with Malfoy’s dad. He just… wanted to.”

Vince audibly gagged at that and gasped, _“Fuck! Greg!_ ”

Draco sagged back against the wall, his entire body trembling so hard that he could barely stay upright. He had to get away. He couldn’t listen to any more of this and he couldn’t be caught outside this door, but his legs were on the verge of collapse and his stomach was up in his throat. If he’d eaten anything that day, it would be all over the stones at his feet.

He sucked in a ragged breath, pressing the back of his head and the palms of his hands hard against the rough stone to brace himself. The voices went on, snatches of words penetrating the thud of his own heart in his ears and making him still more desperate to escape. He closed his eyes, fighting for control.

 _Don’t be such a twat, Malfoy,_ he told himself sternly. _You know how to walk. Just do it. Pick up your feet and_ walk _._

He pushed away from the wall and hazarded a step. His knees held.

_Nott is a foul little prick with the soul of a dementor. He always has been._

Another step and another. Then he was actually walking, heading for the common room and escape.

_Let him spew his bile. He can’t hurt you. He’ll be gone tomorrow and the castle will smell the sweeter for it._

He hurried across the common room, almost running by the time he reached the outer door. If any of the younger student spoke to him, he didn’t hear it. Then he was stumbling into the dungeon passage, gasping for air, choking on fear and shame. His legs tried to buckle under him, to carry him down to the floor, but he grabbed the wall to hold himself up. He couldn’t stop yet. He couldn’t be found here. He had to get someplace safe before he let go.

Pulling his shoulders back and pushing himself away from the support of the wall, he took a step forward, only to find himself face to face with Professor Snape.

 _What the fuck?_ Could the man materialize out of thin air now?

Draco put out a hand to catch himself on the wall as his knees failed him again. “Professor!” he choked out.

“I was hoping to find you, Malfoy. There’s been a change…”

“They’re out,” Draco said harshly, cutting him off more abruptly than he would have usually dared. Today, he was too tired and miserable for caution.

Snape frowned. His eyes flicked to the expanse of stone that hid the Slytherin common room, then back to Draco’s face, and his frown deepened. “Was there trouble?”

Draco shook his head.

“Most of them are leaving tonight. The few that are staying will have a magical trace on them, so I know where they are at all times. They’ll be in detention every weekend—just studying, but under my eye—and will only be allowed the use of their wands for classwork. And no more Quidditch.”

Draco glanced up at him, wondering what was going on behind his sallow, scowling face. “That’s the whole team.”

“Nearly.” He favored Draco with something between a sneer and a smile. “We stood no chance of winning the Cup anyway. Not with Potter playing and you sitting the season out.”

“I never beat Potter.”

Snape considered him in his enigmatic way for a moment, then said, his voice almost kind, “You don’t look well.”

Draco’s spine stiffened. “I’m fine. If you’ll excuse me…” He started to leave, to step around Snape’s towering figure and make for the stairs, but the Potions Master moved to block him.

“This can’t go on, Malfoy. You’re destroying yourself.”

“I’m doing what I have to do.”

Behind the cool, white mask of his face, Draco was briefly grateful for his father’s tutelage in Occlumency. He couldn’t help the fact that he looked like death warmed over, but he could damned well keep Snape out of his head! One Dark wizard reading his mind was enough!

“You don’t have to do it alone. Dumbledore told you that I can help. Why have you not come to me?”

“You know why I can’t.” Draco lifted his right hand and massaged it with his left, watching Snape scowl in understanding. “The task is mine, given to me by our master, and my life depends on how well I perform it.”

Snape’s face twisted with annoyance. “I can’t force you to trust me,” he snapped, “but I can tell you that you’re a fool. You gain nothing by putting yourself through this, and you risk everything. Our _master_ will never release you, no matter how hard you punish yourself. The Vow will endure until one or both of you are dead. The only question is how you will die—serving him or fighting for what you believe.”

Draco eyed him from behind his impenetrable mask and said, “I _believe_ that I have a job to do.” Then he stepped around the Potions Master and headed down the passage without a backward glance. This time, Snape made no move to stop him.

Moving faster with every step, until he was practically running, Draco fled to the only safe place left in the castle. Out of the dungeons and across the entry hall, past chattering students and somnolent portraits, up wide stairways and along echoing marble hallways, his feet carried him without his conscious choice. Then, finally, he stood at the door of his little bedroom. He reached through the protective spells to pull the door open, a secret candle flame of hope flickering somewhere down in his belly, only to find the room dim and empty.

The flame went out.

Of course it was fucking empty. Harry was off doing whatever the Boy Who Bloody Lived did on a beautiful, spring day and would not be looking for Draco—here or anywhere.

Tossing his bag onto the bed, Draco climbed in after it and spelled the door shut. Then he crawled up to the head of the bed and curled himself into a pillow. His eyes wandered aimlessly about the room, searching for something to rest on, finding nothing but blank stone and unlit candles.

It was a dingy, shabby, little space. Lonely without Harry’s presence to fill it. Cold and full of shadows without his magic to warm it. But it was safe, and Draco was tired… so incredibly tired…

 

* * *

 

“Draco.” A hand shook him, stroked his hair. “Draco, wake up.”

He dragged his eyes open to stare blankly at a bare stone wall and a candle burning in an iron sconce.

“Draco?”

He twisted onto his back and looked for the source of that voice. Harry was kneeling on the bed behind him, leaning over to peer at his face. His features were drawn and hard, his eyes uncertain. He didn’t smile when Draco looked at him, or touch his hair, or offer him a kiss. He just gazed down at the Slytherin, frowning, clutching a bundle of cloth napkins in one hand.

Draco stared at him for a long minute, trying to find some hint of the Harry he loved so completely in that guarded face. Then he murmured, “What’re you doing here?”

“You didn’t come to dinner. Again. I was worried.”

“I fell asleep.”

“I can see that.” His frown deepened as Draco pushed himself upright and ran a hand through his tousled hair. “I brought sandwiches.”

He held out the napkin-wrapped package and Draco took it without a word. When he did not move to open it, Harry prompted, “Aren’t you going to eat?”

With an inward sigh, Draco flipped open the napkin and lifted out a large, thick, meaty sandwich. The very thought of eating it turned his stomach, but Harry was watching him with those shadowed eyes and he didn’t dare refuse, so he took a listless bite. It tasted like plaster dust and made his throat close up in protest.

“I can get some pumpkin juice, if you want.” Draco shook his head. Harry eyed him sadly, every part of him from the laces on his trainers to the tips of his unruly hair seeming to droop. “I didn’t expect you to come back here, after last night.”

The Slytherin paused, his mouthful of sandwich half-chewed, then shrugged and muttered, “I had nowhere else to go.”

Harry flinched, as if Draco had struck him with a stinging hex. Tears started in his eyes that Draco knew he wasn’t supposed to see. “Do you want me to leave?”

“No.” Draco ducked his head, chewed, swallowed, then asked in a muffled voice, “How did you know I was here?”

“Does it matter? I have my ways.”

Draco took another bite and chewed it, but when he’d managed to choke it down, he set the sandwich back on the napkin and pushed it resolutely away. “I can’t. I just want to sleep.”

“You can have them when you wake up.”

Sudden hot tears stung Draco’s eyes, and he turned away from the other boy, muttering, “I don’t want to wake up.”

“Dragon!” Harry blurted out, his hands coming up to grab him, but he remembered himself in time and tucked them down between his knees. “For Fuck’s sake, will you please tell me what to do?”

“I don’t know.”

A growl of frustration rose in the Gryffindor’s throat. “At least tell me how I hurt you.”

“You didn’t.”

“I _did_. I’m not a complete moron, Draco, and I know I hurt you! I just don’t know _how!_ ”

“It wasn’t your fault. It was mine.”

“Bollocks!” Harry said rudely. His hands came up again, reaching instinctively for Draco, but hesitated with a few inches still between them. “Can I touch you?”

Draco looked up at him, startled, and saw the pleading in Harry’s eyes. His tears quickened. He nodded once and gave a low sob of relief as Harry gathered him into his arms.

“Okay. It’s going to be okay.”

Draco’s only answer was to latch his arms about Harry’s waist and burrow into his chest, shaking in reaction, desperate to feel every part of him at once.

“I can fix it, I promise.” Draco said nothing, but Harry was used to his silences by now and went on as if he’d spoken. “I don’t know what went wrong last night. You were so tired and depressed, and I thought it would help to be close again. To touch each other like we used to…”

“It did!” Draco cried, cutting him off. “It was brilliant, exactly what I needed, until…”

“Until we started shagging?” Harry offered gently.

Draco shivered. “I wanted it so much. But I wanted to touch you, look at you, c- call your name when I…” Sobs shook him, muffling his words and prompting Harry to begin petting his hair.

“Shh.”

Swallowing his tears, Draco forced himself to go on, to rip the scab off the wound. “The only way I could stop myself was to run the equations to block you out. But then it was… it was like you were a stranger.”

“Fuck, Draco,” Harry breathed.

“I could feel it—feel you—inside me, but it wasn’t you. It was just someone fucking me. _Using_ me. And I thought I was back in my bed at the Manor, with a man…”

“No. Stop.” Harry pressed a kiss to his head, holding him almost frantically. “That’s enough. Why didn’t you _say_ something?!”

“I couldn’t ask you to stop, not after holding you off for so long.”

“Yes, you bleeding well could!”

“No! I wanted— _want_ you to be happy! I thought I could shut my mind and just let it happen, but it turns out that I’m as lousy a whore as I am a son. Or a friend or a lover or a Seeker…”

“Stop that.” Harry tilted Draco’s head up and kissed him, cutting off his self-pitying tirade. “You’re not a whore. You don’t owe me or anyone else a piece of your arse. And if you really want me to be happy, you’ll stop _killing_ yourself to suit fucking Voldemort!”

“If I don’t, he’ll do it for me.”

“Does your hand hurt? Is he eavesdropping on us, right now? Because if he is, I have a few choice words for him!”

Draco looked up into Harry’s face, saw the righteous anger, the drive to rescue even such a pathetic excuse for a human being as himself blazing in it, and against all reason, a smile tilted his lips. “My hero.”

Harry laughed, and the flames leaping in his eyes abruptly died down to a warming glow. “Careful. Don’t give away any secrets.”

“It’s no secret that I love it when you get all heroic and protective on me. It makes my poor, little heart flutter and I need you to fuck me into the mattress.”

Harry leaned in to kiss him, slowly and deeply. Draco was beginning to burn with need and was wondering how he was going to get out of this without driving them both mad, when Harry pulled back and murmured, “Not until I get to hear you scream my name as you come.”

A sob of mingled relief and frustration was torn out of Draco’s throat, almost but not quite forming Harry’s name. He dropped his head, pushing it hard into the other boy’s shoulder. Fresh tears stung his eyes.

“Fucking heroic Gryffindor git.”

“That’s me. Now quit blubbing and eat your sandwich.”

Draco pushed himself away from the other boy and fixed him with a sour glare. “Fucking heroic Gryffindor git _nursemaid_.”

Harry just smirked and held out the partially eaten sandwich to him. Draco wiped his eyes on his sleeve, sighed, and took it. For some reason, his throat didn’t feel nearly so tight now. He might even be able to eat.

 

*** *** ***

 

Draco was driving Harry insane.

The Slytherin attended most of his classes and showed up to just enough meals to convince his Gryffindor lover that he wasn’t actively trying to starve himself. He slept in their private room, curled trustingly in Harry’s arms. But outside that room, he might have been a ghost. He drifted through his days, speaking to no one, looking at his professors with dead, distant eyes. Harry didn’t see him, except for glimpses across the Great Hall or a crowded classroom, until he crawled into bed—a little later each night—and collapsed with barely a word. And to Harry’s horror, he seemed to be wasting away in front of his eyes, growing visibly thinner, greyer, more shadowed and insubstantial with every passing day.

In desperation, Harry took to staring at his name on the Marauder’s Map by the hour. He carried the map in his pocket and pulled it out to check on Draco any time the Slytherin wasn’t in his direct line of sight. He knew it was foolish—much of the time, Draco was in the Room of Requirement, where the map couldn’t track him—but he couldn’t help himself. Part of it was simple longing, the need to see his lover’s name on the parchment when he couldn’t see his face, but even more of it was fear. Fear that Draco had been attacked again, beaten, tortured by Voldemort, or simply passed out in a dark corner where he would lie—alone and unaided—until he died.

This thought tormented Harry to point that he started haunting the seventh floor hallway outside the Room of Requirement when he knew Draco was inside. He didn’t dare go in. Draco would be furious, maybe furious enough to hex him or throw him out of his bed. Self-preservation dictated that Harry stay out of the other boy’s business, let him get on with his work, and wait patiently for him to reappear, but what if he didn’t? What if he was lying in that room, among the heaps of discarded objects, too ill or weak to drag himself out the door again?

Harry was obsessing over this question one morning, his eyes on the unhelpful map, paying no attention to Professor McGonagall’s explanation of the five exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration, when Hermione caught him at it.

She jabbed him sharply in the ribs and hissed, “ _Stop it, Harry._ ”

He looked up, a guilty flush on his cheeks. _What?_ he mouthed silently.

McGonagall had her back to the room, golden lines of script streaming from her wand to hang in the air above her head, and clearly had not noticed Harry’s lack of attention. So what was Hermione’s problem?

“This is important,” Hermione whispered fiercely.

Harry rolled his eyes and dropped them to the map again.

He didn’t have time for Gamp’s Sodding Law. Malfoy had left him that morning, muttering something about a clean robe, then disappeared. He hadn’t made it to breakfast and he wasn’t in his usual seat at the back of the classroom. He wasn’t anywhere on the Marauder’s Map. Which meant that he’d gone straight from Harry to the fucking Room of Requirement and whatever Voldemort was forcing him to do. It made Harry’s blood boil.

“What’s the problem, mate?” Ron whispered from his other side, interrupting his train of thought.

Harry opened his mouth to tell him to shut it, but McGonagall got in before him.

“Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, do you have a question?”

Harry shot Ron a glare from the corners of his eyes and ground out, “No, Professor.”

“Then I suggest you be quiet and listen.”

Suddenly, Harry had had enough. He lurched to his feet, sending his chair skidding back to bump into Parvati’s desk, and said, “I’m not feeling well, Professor. I need to go to the hospital wing.”

McGonagall’s frown told Harry that she wasn’t buying it, but she gave him a curt nod and turned back to her magical writing. Harry gathered his belongings and stuffed them every which way into his bag, then he hurried out of the room, ruthlessly ignoring Ron and Hermione’s startled looks.

Once safely away from the classroom, he tucked himself into an alcove behind a statue of a minotaur in a pointed wizard’s hat and pulled out the map again. His eyes went to their bedroom first, then to the Slytherin dungeons, then to the corridor outside the Room of Requirement, finding no sign of Malfoy. He groaned and scrubbed his hand over his face, knocking his glasses askew. Was he going to have to spend another day sitting in an empty hallway, staring at trolls in tutus?

“Fuck, Draco,” he muttered.

He sighed, rubbed at his face again, and started to fold the map. Then his eyes fell on a moving dot and the tiny label floating just beside it. Draco Malfoy. Walking along a third-floor corridor, where he had absolutely no business being.

“ _Fuck!_ ” Harry exclaimed, as he scrambled to his feet and squeezed around the minotaur. “What the fuck are you doing down there, you git?”

The little dot had no answer to that. Harry allowed himself a breathless laugh at his own foolishness, then he took off running down the hallway toward the main stairs. He kept the map in his hand and one eye on Draco’s name, afraid that if he looked away for more than a second, it would disappear again. It moved slowly along the corridor, paused in a doorway, then moved inside the girls’ bathroom. And even as Harry watched, bemused, another name materialized next to Draco’s: Moaning Myrtle.

Confused and faintly worried, though he couldn’t say why, Harry bounded down another flight of stairs and raced along the corridor to arrive, red-faced and panting, at the bathroom door. It was shut but not locked. Another glance at the map told Harry that Draco was still inside with Myrtle, so he stuffed the map into his pocket and pushed the door open.

“It’ll be okay,” he heard Myrtle coo, “you’ll figure it out.”

“I can’t. I can’t _do it!_ ”

There was no mistaking the edge of desperation in Draco’s voice, or the tears, and Harry barreled into the room without stopping to think. Draco stood at the back wall, his hands braced on the sides of a sink, his head down, while Myrtle floated anxiously beside him. At the sound of Harry’s entrance, Draco’s head came up sharply. Their eyes met in the mirror, just as Myrtle cried,

“Oh, Harry, thank goodness you’re here!”

“Why _are_ you here?” Draco growled, spinning to face the Gryffindor with a snarl of pain on his face.

“He can help you, Draco, I’m sure. Harry is so clever.”

Harry took a step toward the other boy, his hand out. “I want to help. Please, Draco, let me…”

“No!” Draco shouted, cutting him off. He stumbled away from the sink, away from Harry’s reaching hand, toward the door, sobbing, “You can’t be here! Get _away_ from me! Get…”

Suddenly, he froze. His body stiffened, his back arched, and he dropped to the floor, a terrible scream ripping from his throat. Harry screamed with him and moved too late to catch him.

“Draco!” he howled, as he flung himself down on his knees beside the Slytherin’s shuddering body, “ _Draco!_ ”

“What have you done?!” Myrtle shrieked. “You’re hurting him!”

“No! Draco!” Harry wailed, even as Malfoy thrashed against the cold tile and uttered another hideous, wordless scream of agony. Harry grabbed his shoulders, tried to lift him, only to have the other boy twist out of his grasp and fall to the floor again.

“Draco, _please!_ What is it?!” Harry demanded uselessly.

Myrtle continued to shriek and wail, now tearing at her hair. “You’ve killed him! Murder! _Murder!_ ”

The door crashed open, and Harry turned to see Snape bearing down on him, a furious scowl on his face and a wand in his hand. “Professor, _help!_ ”

“Get away from him, Potter!”

“I didn’t do anything! I _didn’t!_ It’s the V…”

“Get _away!_ ” Snape grabbed Harry’s shoulder and flung him back, away from Malfoy’s body. Then he pointed his wand at Malfoy and sent a fountain of purple sparks flying at him.

The screams and thrashing stopped. Silence descended on the bathroom, broken only by the dreadful sound of Malfoy struggling to breathe. For the space of a heartbeat, Harry just stared at his lover’s white, broken form lying on the tile, then he scrambled to reach him. Snape blocked his way.

“You don’t belong here, Potter.”

“I need to…”

“You need to leave. Now.” His black eyes cut up to where Myrtle still hovered, weeping and clutching at her limp hair. “Both of you.”

“I was trying to _comfort_ him!” she whined. “It was Harry who hurt him! I thought he was your boyfriend,” she added accusingly, her small, tear-swollen eyes glaring at Harry from behind wet glasses. “I thought you _cared about him!_ ”

“Both of you OUT!” Snape bellowed.

Myrtle gasped and dived into the nearest toilet. Harry tried to stand his ground, but Snape’s glare was fierce enough to draw blood.

“You’re only making it worse,” the Potions Master snarled, “haven’t you figured that out yet? He doesn’t need your heroics now. He needs the help of someone who understands what’s happening to him.”

Harry retreated to the doorway but still hesitated. He saw Snape lift Draco’s limp, trembling body in his arms and support it against his chest. He saw the half-conscious boy shudder, twist to hide his face in black robes, move his white lips in a soundless plea, and he finally gave in.

“Tell him I’ll wait for him in our room,” Harry said gruffly, as he pulled the door open. Snape did not vouchsafe an answer, so Harry slipped out the door and let it fall closed behind him.

 

Alone in the bathroom with Draco, Snape fired a locking spell at the door, then conjured a gently-smoking goblet that he caught with his free hand.

“Come on, Malfoy, pull yourself together. Drink this.”

Draco shuddered and pushed himself upright, using Snape’s chest for leverage. “You blocked my magic again,” he rasped out.

“I did. Drink your potion.”

Draco ignored his instructions, choosing instead to fire a killing glare at him, but the tears in his eyes robbed it of its power. “He’ll know! He’ll punish me!”

“He’ll think you passed out from the pain. Try to use the brains you were given, for Salazar’s sake! We can’t have a proper conversation with the Dark Lord listening, and you can’t take anymore of his torture! You’re half dead already. Now, _drink._ ”

Draco’s hand shook hard enough to slop some potion from the goblet, but he got it to his lips without Snape’s help and swallowed half its contents in one gulp. The heat of it made him splutter and swear. Smoke curled up from his ears, while his cheeks turned pink.

“Good,” Snape said gruffly, as Draco downed the last of the potion. “Now tell me what in bleeding hell happened in here.”

“Where’s Harry?” Draco growled.

“I threw him out.”

“I want to talk to him.”

“Suit yourself. Obviously, I can’t stop you from signing your own death warrant, but I can insist that you tell me how you ended up on the floor of a girls’ lavatory, screaming under a Cruciatus Curse.”

Draco hitched a sullen shoulder and shot another glare at him from beneath his lashes. “You blocked my magic, so you know how.”

Snape sighed. He suddenly felt infinitely weary, weighted down by the hostility, stupidity and blind stubbornness of sixteen-year-old boys in general and this one in particular. He had accepted Dumbledore’s orders to guide Malfoy through his task, to act as a go-between and keep the Headmaster informed, without a murmur, assuming it would be a simple matter. But nothing to do with Draco Malfoy and Harry Bloody Potter was ever simple.

Letting some of his weariness leak into his voice, he said heavily, “I’m trying to help you, Malfoy.”

“You said,” was the sullen reply.

Weariness gave way to annoyance. “You’re spending far too much time with those Gryffindors. You’re picking up their habits of rudeness and bad grammar.”

“Since when are you so interested in my grammatical failings?” Draco snapped back.

“I’m interested in saving your life. _And_ Dumbledore’s, in case you were wondering just how much I do know!”

Draco ducked his head, and Snape fancied he could hear the boy grinding his teeth. “I’m sure _he_ told you all about it.”

“Ah. You think I’m working for the Dark Lord.” This was hardly a surprise, if he were being honest. Malfoy spent all his free time with Potter, and Potter thought Snape was two steps below pond scum. “All right, suppose I am. What does that matter? I can still help you complete your task, whatever side I’m ultimately on!”

Tear-bright, furious eyes lifted to Snape’s face, pinning him with a power he had not suspected in the haunted, fragile-seeming boy. A snarl contorted his lips, and his spine stiffened until he suddenly looked far too much like Lucius Malfoy.

His voice was deadly soft when he said, “You let my father prostitute me and Voldemort enslave me and Greyback _rape me_ , and you still say you want to _help?_ ”

Snape just stared at him, at a loss for words, but Draco didn’t have that problem. He’d found his tongue, summoned his outrage, let loose the torrent of words in him and had no intention of stemming the tide.

“Dumbledore may trust you, but I’m not so gullible! I know what you are! I’ve seen the Mark on your arm, seen you sitting at my parents’ table surrounded by Death Eaters, seen you bowing and scraping to that foul monster who calls himself a _Lord_. You may not have been there the night he made me his slave and handed me over to a werewolf as a sex toy, but don’t pretend you didn’t know about it! Don’t pretend you didn’t know _all of it!_ ”

“I didn’t!” Snape finally managed to blurt out. “I didn’t, Draco, I swear it!”

“I don’t believe you.” Draco staggered to his feet and swayed precariously as he howled, “ _I don’t fucking believe you!_ ”

Snape leapt up to catch him, even as his knees buckled and he slumped to the floor again, shaking with rage.

“Don’t touch me! _Get your fucking hands off me!_ ”

Snape snatched his hands back before he could stop himself.

He’d always thought of the Malfoy boy as a weak reflection of his father, destined to be used and discarded by the Dark Lord, and the weeks of watching him dwindle into a ghost of his old, arrogant, spiteful self had only reinforced that view. But suddenly, he saw something more in the boy. An preternatural strength. A core of goblin-forged steel only revealed as the mortal flesh that sheathed it was harrowed away.

“I didn’t know about any of it,” he insisted, struggling to keep his cool in the face of Draco’s fury. “Not the Vow, Greyback, Lucius’ disgusting behavior, _any of it_. They kept me out of it because they knew I would not have stood idly by and let them abuse you that way!”

“Are you saying you’d have stopped it?” Draco sneered.

“I…”

His hesitation brought a smug glint to Draco’s eyes, undercut by the fresh tears in them. “Of course not. I’m Daddy’s little whore. No one’s going to stick their neck out to help me.”

Snape gave him a level look, refusing to respond to his crudeness. “I would have tried. That’s all I can say.”

Something in his manner seemed to defuse Draco’s anger. He sat very still, gazing intently at the Potions Master, apparently weighing his words. Then he asked bluntly, “Can you stop my father from selling me?”

“I don’t know. Now that the Dark Lord is involved…”

“I’m Voldemort’s rent-boy,” he said, bitterly. From the way the name stuck in his throat, Snape suspected that it was the first time he had ever spoken it aloud.

“Right now, you have more pressing worries,” Snape said, his voice as close to gentle as it ever got. “Your father can’t force you to do anything, while you’re inside these walls, but the Dark Lord can.”

“He’s going to kill me. I haven’t fulfilled the terms of the Vow, and he’s angry with me.”

“Are you actually trying? Do you want to succeed?”

Draco’s eyes widened. “Yes. Not all of it, but the cabinet… yes, I want to succeed.”

Snape tipped his head closer to the boy and urged, “Then _let me help_.”

Once again, Draco fell still, turning over his words and considering his options. In that moment—sitting there in the half-light, purple shadows in his face, a frown dragging down his lips—he looked a hundred years old. But when he finally blinked his eyes back into focus and turned them on Snape, the pleading in them made him look desperately young.

“All right,” he whispered, “tell me what to do.”

A sickening wave of relief hit Snape, making his head spin, but he masked it with his signature scowl. Climbing to his feet, he held out a hand to pull Malfoy up after him.

“Come to my office. I have some books on ancient magical objects and a list of diagnostic spells to try. I’ve also got some living specimens you can use to test it, when you get that far.”

“Nothing that will scream,” Malfoy whispered, his cheeks paling.

“No. Nothing with enough of a brain or nervous system to suffer, if the test fails.”

“Okay.” Malfoy fell into step at Snape’s side, but as they reached the door, he hung back. “You’d better unblock my magic.”

Snape considered this, frowning, then gave a reluctant nod. A flick of his wand, a burst of purple light, and the boy standing at his side visibly flinched. His shoulders drooped, then stiffened as he drew himself up. His face was once more old beyond belief and his eyes hard with the effort of control.

“I’m sorry, Malfoy,” Snape said quietly.

Draco just shook his head and walked out the door.

 

**_To be continued…_ **


	10. On the Tower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to my wonderful reviewers!! I really couldn't get through this without your comments and encouragement!
> 
> I hope you enjoy the chapter.

 

Harry came barreling through the portrait hole with no thought for who might be standing on the other side. His eyes swept the common room and lit on two figures seated by the fire. Ron and Hermione both looked up expectantly at his explosive entrance. Harry gave a twitch of his head, signaling for them to follow, then bounded up the spiral staircase to his dormitory.

The bedroom was empty. Harry strode over to his trunk, flung it open, and was rummaging through it when Ron and Hermione came in.

“Well?” Ron demanded. “What did Dumbledore want?”

“He’s found a Horcrux. We’re going after it tonight.”

Hermione shivered and hugged herself. “You still want to go with him?” Her voice sounded dubious, and her eyes were worried.

“Of course I do!” Harry pulled his traveling cloak from the tangle of stuff in his trunk and shook it out. “But we’re going now, which doesn’t give me time to look for Draco.”

“What d’you need him for?” Ron asked.

“I have to tell him we’re leaving.”

Hermione frowned at that. “This is really dangerous, isn’t it? You’re afraid you won’t come back and you want to warn Malfoy.”

Harry snorted as he struggled with the clasp on his cloak. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be with Dumbledore. But Draco still needs to know, and I need to be sure he’s safe.”

Her far-too-observant eyes fastened on him in a disconcerting way. “Why wouldn’t he be?”

Harry flushed.

Bugger. He was getting as tired and careless as Draco, speaking without thinking. Next, he’d be spilling secrets about Unbreakable Vows and Voldemort eavesdropping on their sex life.

“No reason,” he muttered. Then, abruptly, he pulled the Marauder’s Map from his pocket and thrust it into Hermione’s hands. “Just keep an eye out for him, please. He’ll probably stay in the Room of Requirement half the night, but if he comes out before I get back, tell him where I’ve gone.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to go in and tell him?” Ron pointed out reasonably.

Harry opened his mouth to protest—to tell them that Draco was working on something dangerous and _private,_ and he would roast them alive if they barged in on him—but Hermione forestalled him.

“I doubt we could get in,” she said in her most know-it-all tone. “It’s not like we can just tell the Room to show us what Malfoy is doing.”

Harry nodded earnestly as he tucked his invisibility cloak into the front of his robe. “Right. That’s right. I’m sure it doesn’t work that way.”

Hermione’s eyes narrowed again, as if she sensed his eagerness to convince them that they’d never find the right configuration of the Room, but she said nothing. Harry breathed an internal sigh of relief and headed for the door.

“Thanks.” He hesitated just outside the room to say, “I know it sounds like I’m taking the mickey, but this is really important.”

“We know it is, Harry,” Hermione said with unexpected seriousness. “We’re not stupid. We’ve seen what’s happened to Malfoy this term, and we know he’s in some kind of terrible trouble.”

Harry regarded her for a long moment, then he abruptly stepped back into the room and shut the door behind him.

“Okay, if I tell you what I know, you have to keep it to yourselves.” They both nodded solemnly. “Voldemort is using Draco to get to Dumbledore. He’s torturing him, threatening his family, forcing him to… well, I don’t know exactly what, because Draco and Dumbledore won’t tell me.”

“Dumbledore knows?” Hermione asked.

“Yes. He apparently told Draco to do it, to keep Voldemort from hurting him anymore.”

“The dungeons,” Ron cut in, white-faced and horrified. “That’s what happened in the dungeons.”

Harry nodded. “It was Voldemort who cast the Cruciatus.”

“Blimey. How’d he do that? He wasn’t in the castle, was he?”

“No, but he did it, and it’s not the only time. I found Draco in Myrtle’s bathroom just a couple of weeks ago, and he…” Harry broke off to swallow the sickness in his throat, unable to describe that horrifying scene.

“Harry.” Hermione crossed the room to him and laid a gentle hand on his arm. “You know we’ll do anything we can to help. Just tell us what you need.”

“I did. Find Draco and tell him where we’ve gone. But don’t try to get into the Room of Requirement. It’s not safe—for you or for him.”

“Okay.”

Harry softened at her doubtful tone and looped an arm around her shoulders to give them a quick squeeze. His friends were the best. Stubborn, nosy, bossy and thoroughly irritating sometimes, but still the best.

“Trust me, it’ll help.”

“It doesn’t feel like much, when we’re talking about V- Voldemort,” she choked out, “and people’s lives.”

He squeezed her again, quickly and fiercely, then let her go and reached for the door. “I have to go. Dumbledore’s waiting.”

“Be careful,” Hermione whispered, clutching at his arm.

“I will.”

Then he was gone, bounding down the stairs and hurrying across the common room, his mind already turning away from the castle and its inhabitants to fasten on the task ahead. Finding a Horcrux. Destroying another piece of Voldemort’s rotten soul. Taking another step closer to victory and freedom for all of them.

 

*** *** ***

 

The cabinet hummed with power. Draco could see it, like a bright afterimage around the edges of the doors, and feel it in the fine bones of his head. It made him faintly dizzy.

He reached out to touch it with the tips of his fingers, and a sizzling jolt of excitement shot up his arm, into his chest. His heart faltered. His breath caught in his throat. Blackness swam before his eyes for a moment, as a triumphant shriek filled his skull.

 _Like the cry of a bird_ , he thought, his mind teetering on the brink of unconsciousness.

Then his heart lurched into motion again, and the blackness receded. The pain in his hand did not, but he’d long since learned to cope with it. He reached to open the doors of the Vanishing Cabinet, using both hands equally, though his right burned with a fierce, consuming agony that should have reduced him to shivering tears.

The inside of the cabinet looked no different than it had the first time he’d opened it, but Draco no longer mistook it for unimpressive. Now it frightened him. He’d seen what it could do to anything placed on that scarred, dusty floor. He had a pile of broken objects, squashed fruit and—most horribly—the cut and mangled bodies of Snape’s test creatures to prove it. They hadn’t screamed as they died. Snape had made good on that promise. But Draco had nearly vomited the first time he had to _Scourgify_ the remains of a grub the size of a Quaffle from the cabinet’s walls.

He had only one living sample left—a gallon jar full of squirming, writhing, segmented worms that seemed intent on tying themselves into knots. He’d saved it for last because the very thought of having to clean up what was left, after the cabinet destroyed jar and worms together, made him want to spew on the spot. It would be worse than the Quaffle Grub. He didn’t even want to touch the jar, so nauseating were its contents.

 _Test it!_ the bird-voice shrieked in his head. _At once!_

Draco didn’t argue. Didn’t hesitate, though he shuddered as he reached for the jar. It was heavy, but he didn’t think to cast a charm to lighten it. He simply hefted the foul thing into the cabinet and pushed it into the middle of the floor. Then he gave the disgusting worms a final, apologetic glance as he swung the doors shut. Either they’d end up splattered all over the insides of the cabinet, or they’d make the journey safely and end up in the hands of Lord Voldemort. Both equally grim prospects.

The light around the cabinet brightened. The power hummed in his head, making his ears and jaw hurt. He waited through a count of ten, then he swung the doors open. The cabinet was empty. He immediately shut them again and counted to ten. When he opened the doors a second time, a gallon jar stood squarely in the center of the floor, full of hideous, gut-churning, very much alive worms.

Draco had a split second to contemplate his success before a howl of laughter split his skull and sent him staggering blindly away, groping for something solid to hold onto in the shrieking madness.

 _How clever of you, Draco_ , the hideous voice gloated. _Such a lovely, clever boy! Did you hope for a reward? Another night with our faithful Greyback, perhaps? That can be arranged, but not until you’ve finished the job! Oh, no, not until you’ve truly earned it!_

Draco grabbed hold of the first thing that came to hand—an ancient, three-legged desk—for support. It tilted under his hands, pitching him down to sprawl across its surface, where he lay, eyes screwed shut, sobbing in agony and horror. Voldemort laughed again, and the sound felt like claws on his skin.

_My Death Eaters are here. Prepare the cabinet._

That jolted him upright, urgency driving out even the fear of Voldemort’s promised reward.

_Now?_

He looked around wildly, hunting for inspiration.

They couldn’t come now! He wasn’t ready. He had to find Dumbledore, tell him what was happening, give him the chance to defend himself.

 _Give me time, Master,_ he begged, trying to keep the frantic edge out of his thoughts. _Dumbledore may not be in the castle. Let me find Professor Snape and…_

Pain blazed through him, no longer confined to his hand but searing every nerve and cell. _This is your task,_ Voldemort warned. _Severus cannot help you. No one can._

_But if Dumbledore isn’t here…_

_My servants will entice him back. And you will do Lord Voldemort’s bidding, my lovely, clever boy, or suffer the consequences. Do you understand?_

_Yes, Master,_ he whispered silently, hating himself for the abject words, even as they formed in his mind.

_Close the cabinet._

Draco looked helplessly at the object he had labored so long to repair, his eyes glazed with tears and deadened with pain.

If he closed the cabinet, the Death Eaters would come through it. If he closed the cabinet, he might survive the night—as Voldemort’s bond-slave—but Dumbledore likely would not. If he closed the cabinet, Harry would never forgive him. But if he did not?

He stared for another handful of seconds, poised between defiance and surrender, unable to make himself choose. Then he abruptly tore his eyes away and ran for the exit. He had to find Harry, to warn him, to get him someplace safe, before the Death Eaters invaded the castle. Then he had to find Dumbledore. If Voldemort learned of his treachery and demanded his life as payment, then so be it. At least the two most important people in the wizarding world—the two people most likely to defeat the Dark Lord—would survive.

He burst through the door and halted in the seventh floor corridor, looking around him helplessly.

What time was it? Where was Harry likely to be? How could he even _think_ with fucking Voldemort screaming like a banshee in the back of his brain?

He turned toward the Gryffindor common room and had taken a single step when a shadow detached itself from the darkness beside the tapestry. His heart stopped.

“Malfoy?”

“Granger!” he gasped, clutching at his chest as his heart started again and slammed against his ribs. “Bloody hell!”

“Sorry. Harry asked me…”

“Where is he?!” Draco snapped, overriding her. “Where’s Harry?!”

“He left with Dumbledore.”

Draco felt all the blood drain from his face. “Left?” He stumbled over to the nearest wall and clutched at it, his body unstrung by shock. “Left the castle?”

“Yes.” Granger frowned at him in concern and edged a few steps closer. “They left right after dinner.”

“Dumbledore, too.” Slowly, he slumped down into a nerveless huddle at the base of the wall. “Holy fuck.” He buried his face in his hands.

“Malfoy.” A light hand touched his shoulder, and Granger’s voice came from just beside him. “What can I do?”

“I need Dumbledore. I need…” A new thought occurred to him. He lifted red-rimmed, desperate eyes to meet her intent gaze. “Snape.”

“You need Snape?” The suspicion and distaste twisting her face would have made him laugh under other circumstances.

“Yes. Will you find him for me, Granger?” He hoped his voice didn’t sound as pleading to her ears as it did to his own. “Tell him… tell him it’s done. They’re coming and I can’t stop it. I tried, but he won’t listen. They’re coming _now._ ”

“Who’s coming?” she asked in a shocked whisper.

“He’ll know. And Granger…”

“What?”

He swallowed the lump in his throat to rasp out, “You and Weasel need to get out of the halls. Go to our secret room. Lock yourselves in.”

Her eyes widened. “Why?”

“It’s going to be bad, and Harry will never forgive me if anything happens to you.”

“What about you, Draco?”

Her use of his given name was almost like a caress. The closest she could ever get to hugging him. “I… Don’t worry about me. Just give my message to Snape and get the hell out of it. _Please_.”

She nodded once and rose to stand over him. Then she held out a hand to pull him up. As he got to his feet, Draco reflected that dealing with Harry’s friends was surprisingly easy. They were so used to finding themselves in preposterous, dangerous situations that they didn’t so much as bat an eye. No Slytherin, including Draco himself, would ever have simply accepted his words, nodded and walked away as Granger was doing. She threw him one more frowning glance over her shoulder but didn’t slow her steps. He waited until she had moved out of sight around a corner, then he turned back to the Room of Requirement.

He found the Vanishing Cabinet again more by instinct than by conscious direction. Voldemort was furious at the delay, and while he didn’t cast another Cruciatus Curse, he poured his molten rage into Draco’s unprotected body until the boy was staggering in pain and blinded by tears. A few paces short of his goal, Draco’s legs gave out, tumbling him to the floor.

When he dragged his head up and looked at the cabinet, standing just out of reach, the thought came to him, _I’m not strong enough. I’m going to die right here on the floor, and it’ll all be over._

 _Close the doors,_ Voldemort demanded, in his high, cold, cruel voice.

“I’m trying,” Draco sobbed aloud.

_On your feet, boy, and close the doors!_

With another, harsher sob, Draco pushed himself up to his knees, then to his feet. He swayed perilously but managed to stay upright.

Three steps to the cabinet. Bend down to grasp the jar. Drag it out and roll it to the side. _Just do it, Malfoy_ , he told himself, not caring that Voldemort was listening. _Just do as you’re told and it’ll be over._

The jar safely out of the way, he reached for the doors and swung them together. They closed with a faint _snick_ , and instantly, magic began to shimmer around their edges. Draco backed away, fumbling for his wand, pointing it at the cabinet as clunks and scrapes sounded inside it.

Should he open the doors? Would they be trapped inside, if he didn’t?

A bang and a flash and a howl of manic laughter answered his question. The doors exploded outward, one of them tearing half off its hinges, and his Aunt Bellatrix tumbled out of the cabinet. Draco caught a glimpse of a dark passage behind her, filled with black-robed figures, then more bodies crowded forward to leap from the cabinet and he was surrounded.

It was the vault all over again. Black robes and hard, unyielding faces everywhere. His aunt staring at him with feral eyes, teeth bared to strike. And Greyback. The werewolf didn’t seem interested in Draco at the moment—too eager to reach the castle and all those soft, sweet, unprotected bodies—but Draco still wanted to crawl through a wall to escape him.

“Come along, Nevvy!” Bellatrix crowed, grabbing Draco by the collar and hauling him close enough that he could smell absinthe on her breath. “Time for some fun!”

The mob of more than a dozen Death Eaters stampeded toward the door, with Bellatrix at its head and Draco dragged along at her side. They burst out of the Room of Requirement and found themselves in a dark, silent corridor. Silence fell, broken only by the rustle of clothing and a few mutters from the back of the group. Bellatrix looked up and down the corridor, a pleased smirk on her face, then she tugged Draco close again.

“Where’s the senile old ponce hiding himself?”

“He’s gone,” Draco croaked out around the collar cutting into his throat. “I don’t know where.”

“Faugh!” she snorted.

Letting go of Draco so quickly that he nearly tumbled to the floor, she pointed her wand at the nearest window. A tremendous blast of power blew it away, leaving a gaping, ragged hole in the castle wall and filling the hallway with flying debris. The rain of pulverized glass and stone had not begun to settle when Bellatrix rushed over to the hole, thrust her wand through it, and fired a jet of green light up into the night.

“That’ll bring Dumby running!” she cackled in mad glee.

Before Draco could do more than glance up at the Dark Mark now hovering in the black sky above the Astronomy Tower, he heard a shout from down the hallway, and chaos erupted. The corridor was full of running bodies and flying spells. Shouts and curses. Chunks of stone torn loose by jets of magic striking walls and floor. Bellatrix’s lunatic screams and Greyback’s animal growls.

Draco huddled into the shadows behind a suit of armor, hoping to be overlooked. But as always for Lucius Malfoy’s son, hope was vain.

Bellatrix’s hand fastened in his collar once more and dragged him into out of his hiding place. “Get to the tower!” she shrieked. “We’ll hold them off!”

“What for?” Draco shouted over the sizzle and bang of spells exploding. He heard Greyback howl and a woman scream.

“Dumbledore will go to the Mark!”

Yaxley reached into a pouch on his belt and pulled out a handful of dark powder. “Get your arse moving, boy!” he bellowed. Then he threw the powder into the air, and pitch blackness descended on the packed corridor.

Draco looked around him in panic, suddenly completely blind and disoriented. Then he saw a jet of purple light cut through the murk—dim and quickly muffled, but enough to give him some sense of direction—and he took off running toward the source. He didn’t let himself think about who was out there in the unnatural darkness or what might happen to them with Bellatrix and Greyback on the loose. His sole thought was reaching the Astronomy Tower and Dumbledore before any of the others did. So he put his head down, called on all his low Slytherin cunning, and ran for it.

He stumbled free of the clinging blackness into the normal shadows of the night castle, only to find that the battle had expanded ahead of him. A group of four combatants—two Death Eaters and two adults he didn’t recognize—blocked his path with a storm of magic, but Draco hadn’t spent the last year hiding in corners with Harry Potter to no purpose. He knew every back passage and hidden stair. Without breaking stride, he ducked beneath a rogue curse, flung back a tapestry, and bounded up the twisting stair behind it. He even remembered to jump the disappearing step, saying a silent thank you to Harry as he did so.

When he finally reached it, the top of the Astronomy Tower was strangely quiet after the madness below, bathed in moonlight, almost serene except for the greenish glow of the Dark Mark floating above. Draco stepped out onto the high platform and looked around with an inward sigh of relief. He’d made it.

“Hello, Draco.”

He started and looked, wide-eyed, at the tall, wand-thin figure standing at the parapet. Dumbledore, with two broomsticks lying on the stone at his feet.

_Two broomsticks?_

Draco instinctively turned to search the darkness for the other wizard he knew was there, but Dumbledore spoke again, demanding his attention.

“I gather you completed your task.”

“Yes.” He took a cautious step or two closer to the Headmaster, his wand still out, his nerves stretched to the breaking point. Dumbledore looked strangely weak and unsteady. He kept one hand on the stone rampart behind him, and his breath came too fast. “The Death Eaters are here.”

Dumbledore glanced up at the grotesque shape glimmering in the night sky above. “So I see.” His voice was still calm, warm, slightly amused, but to Draco’s horror, he visibly sagged, slipping a little down the wall. “Have they already killed? Or is that simply bait for the trap?”

“It’s bait. Bellatrix did it. But…” He stumbled over the words and the sickness that rose in his throat. “…they’re fighting—the Death Eaters and your people. Someone may be…”

“You did your best, Draco.” The old wizard’s voice was so soft that Draco almost didn’t catch it. Soft and kind. So much softer and kinder than he deserved. “Whatever happens next, remember that.”

“I tried to delay them, to give you time!” Draco blurted out, “but he wouldn’t listen!”

“No. Voldemort rarely listens.”

“Professor, what’s happened? Are you injured? Where’s Harry?”

A smile flickered over Dumbledore’s face, even as he slipped a little farther down the wall. His skin looked corpselike in the greenish light. “I am an old fool, as your dear aunt so loves to remind me, who pushed the limits of his strength tonight.” He drew in a labored breath and added, quietly, “Harry is safe.”

Before Draco could respond to this, he heard shouts and pounding feet on the stairs below. He recognized Greyback’s guttural snarl and knew that the Death Eaters had broken through. He opened his mouth to call a warning to Dumbledore, then abruptly changed his mind.

Pointing his wand at the old wizard, he shouted, “ _Expelliarmus!_ ”

Dumbledore’s wand flew out of his blackened hand and spiraled gracefully up, over the parapet, and out of sight. Blue eyes met Draco’s grey ones and smiled in understanding.

“Good man,” the old wizard murmured, just as the Carrows leapt onto the rooftop, followed closely by Mulciber and Greyback.

“There he is!” Alecto Carrow screamed in delight, pointing her wand at Dumbledore and practically dancing with glee. “Dumbledore himself, alone and wandless! _Look_ at him, the pathetic old fool!”

“Not so high-and-mighty now, are you, Dumby?” her brother Amycus cackled. “Disarmed by a half-wit bum-boy!” Turning his gloating eyes on Draco, he added, “Go on, then, Malfoy. Finish the job!”

Draco’s wand trembled. He tore his gaze away from Amycus to follow the crouching, slinking form of Greyback, refusing to look at the man he was now supposed to kill.

“Do it,” Alecto urged, “kill him already! Or are you a coward, as well as a cunt?”

“Respect for human life takes courage, not cowardice,” Dumbledore murmured.

He was slumped down nearly to the rooftop now, breathing in pained gasps, his empty, blackened hand lying beside him on the stone, but the eyes he fixed on Draco were clear and bright and full of understanding.

“Don’t be afraid, Draco. You are not a murderer.”

“He’d better learn,” Mulciber growled, “or next time, Greyback won’t use his nails!”

Greyback uttered a panting, lascivious sound deep in his throat and turned hungry eyes on his prey. Draco took a step back.

He was surrounded by Death Eaters, trapped by their eyes and their wands and their leering grins. He had Dumbledore at his mercy and no way out except over his lifeless body. _What the fuck was he supposed to do?_

He threw a panicked look at Dumbledore.

“What do you w…” he started, but a hand suddenly gripped his shoulder, cutting him off. He spun around to find Snape standing close behind him. “Professor!” he gasped, relief making his limbs turn to water.

“Step away, Malfoy.”

“Oh, no you don’t, Snape!” Amycus snarled. “It’s the boy who has to kill him! You know the rules!”

“Step away,” Snape said again.

Draco gulped and edged back a few steps. His eyes were riveted to Snape’s face, horrified and fascinated by the look of frozen contempt he saw there.

Was it Dumbledore he hated? Was Harry right, after all? Was Snape about to betray them all.

“Severus.”

At the sound of Dumbledore’s quiet voice, Draco glanced at him again and was shocked to see the pleading in his face.

“If the slag won’t do it, I will,” Greyback barked. He prowled the rooftop in his peculiar, half-animal gait, edging ever closer to the old wizard slumped—apparently helpless—against the parapet. As he spoke, Greyback leapt forward, landing on all fours just out of arms’ reach of Dumbledore. “I’ll tear his belly out and feast on his guts.”

“Severus… please…”

Draco watched, unable to believe his eyes, as Snape shoved the Carrows aside and strode to the very center of the platform. His face contorted in rage and his wand jerked up.

 _No,_ Draco mouthed soundlessly, even as the words left Snape’s lips.

“ _Avada Kedavra!_ ”

Green light spat from his wand. It struck Dumbledore squarely in the chest, lifted him into the air like a broken doll, and flung him over the battlements. The body seemed to fall in slow motion. Or perhaps Draco’s mind had finally overloaded and stopped processing what happened before his eyes. All he knew for certain was that he aged a decade in the time it took Dumbledore to tumble out of sight.

Snape’s hand closed on his arm and Snape’s voice growled low in his ear. “Come.”

Draco turned to look at the Potion’s Master. His throat worked as he tried to speak, but nothing came out of his mouth. Finally he managed to whisper, “What have you done?”

Snape grimaced at that and gave him a shove toward the door. “ _Move_ , you fool!”

Draco stumbled, caught his balance, then began to move. They pounded down the stairs together, into the battle that still raged in the halls below. They raced through the smoke-filled hallways, dodging spells and leaping over the bodies that littered the floor. Shouts and questions followed them, but Draco ignored them all until he heard Harry’s voice shouting his name. Then he pulled back, started to turn, only to have Snape nearly throw him down the last flight of stairs into the entry hall.

“Go! _Run!_ ”

“ _NO! HARRY!_ ” Draco screamed, but his voice was lost in the sudden crash of the Slytherin hourglass exploding in a burst of magic. Shards of glass and pebble-sized emeralds cascaded to the floor, rolling treacherously around Draco’s feet. He froze, confused by the noise and flying spells, until Snape grabbed him again and dragged him toward the great Oaken doors and the grounds outside.

They were well down the carriageway, clear of the castle, the cacophony of battle fading behind them, when Draco heard it again.

“ _Draco! Wait!_ ”

He halted and turned to see Harry leaping down the stone steps from the open doors. The Gryffindor had his wand in one hand and his invisibility cloak streaming from the other as he ran. A burst of light from somewhere on the grounds caught his face, and Draco saw that it was streaked with tears.

“ _Harry!_ ”

“Get moving,” Snape growled, giving Draco another shove, then stepping between him and his onrushing lover.

“Harry…”

“Keep away, Potter!” Snape bellowed, firing a blast of power at Harry that lifted him off his feet and flung him to ground. “Don’t test me!”

“ _Murderer!_ ” Harry bellowed from his place on the ground. Draco saw him scramble to regain his feet, only to have Snape throw him back again with another spell. “ _Filthy murderer! You can’t have Draco, too!_ ”

“ _I’m saving his life, you bloody fool!_ ”

“Harry!” Draco sobbed, trying to push past Snape only to wind up on the grass, himself.

Throwing a final crushing spell at the boy lying sprawled on his back, too stunned to move, Snape caught Draco’s arm and pulled him to his feet again.

“This is your last chance, Malfoy,” he snared, face contorted in rage and pain. “If you stay with that imbecile, you’ll die! If you want to live, you’ll _run!_ ”

Draco shot one, final, desperate look at Harry—watched him heave himself up onto his hands and knees, shaking his head to clear it—then he turned and ran.

 

**_To be continued…_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're nearly at the end of "Half-Blood Prince" and the first half of my story. Just a short epilogue to go, then into Uncharted Territory after the war.


	11. Epilogue: After the Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the epilogue I promised. The scene with Draco and Snape is for PetsHeart, as a thank you for your wonderful comments and to ease your worries just a bit.
> 
> I hope you all enjoy it!

 

_— Malfoy Manor —_

Summer lay green and soft on the Wiltshire countryside. From his window, Draco could see a swathe of the formal gardens, an ornamental lake, and the deep green fringes of a wood beyond. A profusion of bright flowers filled every manicured bed, humming with bees. A white peacock strutted majestically over the lawn. The shadow of a hunting hawk swept across the lake’s surface, startling a rabbit on its verge into panicked flight.

It was all so lovely and peaceful. So familiar. So… not where he wanted to be.

Last night, when they had appeared at the gates of the Manor, the first words out of Draco’s mouth were, _Why did you bring me_ here!?

Snape’s answer still rang in his ears. _Where else do you imagine you could go?_

 _Back to Hogwarts, to Harry,_ he’d wanted to say. But he was a coward—afraid to defy Snape, afraid to face the Dark Lord’s vengeance, afraid to _die_ —so he’d clamped his mouth shut on those words and let Snape march him through the gates, into the Manor, to face his punishment.

Draco shifted in his chair, feeling the ache of bruises and the burn of torn skin, the tingle of savaged nerves.

At least he was in his own room. He couldn’t bear to sleep in the bed anymore, but an armchair was preferable to the alternatives, like the dungeons. Or a Death Eater’s bed.

He’d wondered what dark hole he’d find himself in, after his father’s cold, furious reception. Apparently, arranging for Voldemort’s minions to enter Hogwarts and disarming Dumbledore so Snape could kill him was not enough to restore the Malfoy pride. He, Draco, had not cast the killing curse himself, and had therefore humiliated his family, yet again.

Draco had feared the worst. But after Voldemort had tortured him in a lackadaisical sort of way, then let Nott have a go at him in front of a crowd of leering Death Eaters, Father had escorted him back to his own room with muttered instructions to stay there until called for. So here he was, staring out at the beautiful summer countryside, wondering when the other hobnailed boot would drop and on which part of his body it would land.

He closed his eyes and propped his forehead on the cold glass.

Draco wasn’t much for looking on the bright side, but he was trying. An armchair was better than a dungeon floor, he told himself. Nott was better than Fenrir Greyback. Life was better than death… or not. But he wasn’t ready to die yet, not when there was any chance that a certain messy-haired, myopic, Gryffindor hero would free him from Voldemort in the end.

He didn’t dare let that hero’s name form in his mind or let the hope in him grow. Hope was a trap. Thoughts of green eyes, baggy jumpers, Quidditch-callused hands, lean-muscled limbs and hungry lips were dangerous. Oh, so dangerous! Even if Voldemort was too busy murdering Muggles and plotting his takeover of the Wizarding world to spy on Draco’s fevered longings. Better to count his meagre blessings or run equations in his head ’til he went completely barking mad.

A knock sounded on the door. Not the _rat-a-tat_ of his father’s snake-headed cane, so Draco ignored it. If it wasn’t his father or a house-elf, he didn’t give a fuck.

He heard the door open and slitted open his eyes to see Severus Snape come flapping into his room, all greasy black hair and robes like crows’ wings. Draco lifted his head and scowled at him.

“How are you feeling?” Snape asked, as he crossed the room to where the boy sat.

Draco’s scowl deepened. “Why do you care?”

Snape stood over him, frowning down into his pale, sick, haggard face. “You look like hell.”

“Sorry,” Draco muttered, his eyes skating away and his cheeks heating, “I didn’t know I had a customer coming.”

Snape’s face contorted with disgust for a moment, then returned to its usual sour expression. “Do you honestly think that’s why I’m here? Or are you just throwing one of your tantrums?”

Draco stared at the other man, trying to process his words. He was exhausted and in pain, his body fouled with sweat, blood and sex, his brain tormented by images of Snape’s hate-filled face and Dumbledore’s falling body. He was at the end of his endurance, beyond caring what Voldemort, his father, Snape or any of them had in store for him. If his Potions Master was going to tie him down and bugger him, then so be it. If he wasn’t, then what the fuck was he doing here? Either way, Draco just wanted it over with.

“I’m too bloody tired to throw anything. If you’ve already paid my father, then obviously, I have to do whatever you want. If you haven’t, then get the fuck out and leave me alone.”

“Not ’til you hear me out,” Snape growled, as he swung the desk chair around to face Draco’s armchair and settled into it. He eyed Draco with something like sympathy. “I’m sorry your father is putting you through this, Malfoy. I want to help, but I’m not going to sit here and listen to you make obscene offers or swear at me like a low-bred Gryffindor. If you want my help, you have to act like it.”

“Act like it? What does that mean? Drop my pants and bend over a chair?”

“There you go again. Look at me, Malfoy!” Draco’s eyes slid reluctantly up to meet Snape’s. “I am not here to hurt or use or humiliate you. That may be hard to believe, given what you’ve been through lately, but it’s true. I’m offering you my help!”

“You were supposed to be helping Dumbledore, too,” Draco muttered. “Look how that turned out.”

The thin, frowning lips tightened and the black eyes flashed a warning. “The less you know about what passed between me and Dumbledore, the better for you.”

“I know what _passed between you_. I was there.”

“No, you don’t. And that’s the last I’ll say about it. Now, pull yourself together and listen.”

Draco opened his mouth to object but thought better of it in time. Whatever Snape’s real reasons for what he’d done, he’d saved Draco’s life last night and prevented him from killing Dumbledore himself. Thanks to Snape, Draco was not a murderer.

Slowly, stiffly, not sure if he was about to make the biggest mistake of his life by trusting this man, Draco uncurled his feet from the chair and straightened up to face him. “I’m listening.”

Snape relaxed, recognizing the decision Draco had just made. His face softened very slightly. “I know under your father’s thumb is the last place you want to be, and I don’t blame you for that. But it’s the only place you _can_ be, for the present.”

Draco nodded reluctantly.

“It’s only for the summer, then you’ll return to Hogwarts with me. This is not common knowledge, so you won’t repeat it, but the Dark Lord plans to appoint me as Headmaster and to require that all pureblood children attend. This means Lucius can’t refuse to let you go. You’ll be in the castle, under my eye, where I can protect you to some extent.”

“Not from _him_. And not if I don’t make it ’til September.”

“I’ve given that some thought, too—how to make sure you survive the summer under this roof.”

Something like hope stirred in Draco. His head came up. “And?”

“I spoke to your father. I believe I convinced him that it’s in his best interests to keep you reasonably healthy.” His habitual frown twisted into a derisive sneer, but his next words proved that Draco was not the object of his disdain this time. “Most of your value to him is in your looks, and those won’t last much longer, the way he’s abusing you.”

“So he’s not… he won’t…”

“He’ll be more careful. Set some rules. Give you time to rest and heal between… customers.”

Draco ducked his head again, fighting sudden tears as hope turned to cold dread. It wasn’t over. His arse was still for sale.

“And I’ll be here much of the time to keep an eye on things.” Snape hesitated, then said in a softer voice than Draco had ever heard him use before, “Lucius is a frightened man. He’s desperate to hold onto some influence, some scrap of power, and you’re the only thing he’s got left that anyone wants.”

“They don’t _want_ me. They want to _fuck_ me, to humiliate my father and give them power over him,” Draco whispered, while hot tears spilled from his eyes, “but he’s too proud or too stupid to see it.”

Snape watched him for a long moment from beneath frowning brows. Then, abruptly, he reached into his pocket and produced a crystal bottle full of murky, olive-drab liquid. Holding it out to Draco, he said, gruffly, “Here. Take this.”

“What is it?”

He waited until Draco took the bottle, then sat back in his chair again. “Something to make you ill.”

White brows scaled up nearly to Draco’s hairline. He stared down at the bottle in confusion.

“One swallow, morning and evening. There’s enough there for three days.”

“Why?”

“I have to leave on an errand for our master and I want you out of sight ’til I get back. I did my best with Lucius, but he’s still bloody Lucius and about as trustworthy as a Gringott’s goblin.” He gestured at the bottle in Draco’s hand. “That won’t make you seriously ill, just enough to explain why you’re keeping to your room and to make you unattractive as a bedmate.”

“Okay…”

“I’ll tell your parents that you’re feeling dodgy, so I sent you to bed with a Healing potion. And I’ll tell our master much the same thing, with some subtle hints about Lucius abusing his property.”

A shudder went through Draco’s body. “He’ll want the pleasure of doing that himself.”

“That’s the idea.” Snape eyed him steadily, no pity in his face, and Draco found it somehow reassuring. “The potion works fast, so get yourself to bed before you take it. No point in waiting for the first dose. Take it now and you’ll probably sleep ’til morning.”

Draco nodded wordlessly but did not move to obey.

Snape cocked his head, frowning. “You need the sleep, Malfoy. You won’t last if you don’t sleep.”

“I will,” Draco said quietly.

After another moment of glowering silence, Snape got to his feet. “I’ll see you in a few days. Hopefully before you run out of potion. If not…”

“I know what to do.” Draco looked up at him, face blank and rigid with the effort of holding himself together. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

Snape opened his mouth but decided that he had no answer to this and shut it again. With a curt nod, he turned and strode from the room. Draco waited until the door shut behind him, then he curled himself into his chair once more and fixed his wounded gaze on the bed.

His body ached with the longing to stretch himself out on that wide mattress, to slide between soft sheets, to roll himself up in down and silk. To sleep. To sleep without dreaming.

But not in that bed. Never again in that bed, unless he had the weight of another man pinning him to it.

With a grunt of disgust, Draco pulled the stopper from the bottle and tilted it to his lips. The potion was viscous and a bit oily, but it slid easily down his throat. It left a lingering taste of herbs on his tongue. Stoppering it again, he reached up to set it on the windowsill, then he burrowed into the deep cushions of the chair and closed his eyes, surrendering himself to drugged sleep.

 

*** *** ***

 

— _Hogwarts_ —

_I’ll never see this again._

The thought drifted through Harry’s head as he stood on the Astronomy Tower, gazing down at the Hogwarts grounds spread out below him, green and rich and golden in the sunlight. It left an aching gash on his heart in its wake.

_I’ll never see any of this again._

He was losing the place he loved best in all the world. His home. When he boarded the train tomorrow, it would be for the last time. And if he ever did come back, the things that made it so special to him, that made it home, would be gone. Hogwarts would never be the same again.

He wanted to cry at the thought. His eyes were raw and red with the need for tears, but they remained stubbornly dry.

 _How do you say goodbye to your entire life?_ he wondered, his gaze dwelling grimly on the pristine, white rectangle of marble standing stark on the lakeshore. _How do you let go of so much without losing your mind? Losing yourself?_

It was too much for tears—Dumbledore’s death, Draco’s loss, Snape’s betrayal, his looming exile. Tears could never express all his grief and agony and rage. He needed something much bigger. Something like the Phoenix song that had carried Dumbledore out of this life, but Fawkes had gone, as well. Another loss. Another goodbye he didn’t get to say.

And for what? For nothing. For a bit of metal with no magic in it.

Pulling the fake Horcrux from his pocket, Harry turned it in his hands, examining it from every angle. It was completely empty now. No piece of Voldemort’s soul. No cryptic note signed _RAB_. Just a gleaming, golden locket lying on his palm. Useless. Not even worth destroying, except as a petty act of revenge to ease the pressure growing in his chest.

Would it help? Would he feel better after he’d stomped it flat beneath his boot heel, ripped the hinges apart, and flung the pieces into the black lake for the squid to find?

He stared down at it for a long minute, wondering how it would feel to crush and rend the soft metal, then gave a tearing, ugly laugh and stuffed it back in his pocket.

It wasn’t metal he wanted to break, it was flesh and bone. Snape’s flesh and bone. Lucius Malfoy’s. Fucking _Voldemort’s!_ If he could get his hands on just one of them…

“Merlin’s Bloody Balls!” he gasped, as days of crippling grief suddenly burned away in a flash of inspiration.

Of course he could get his hands on them! They were all under one roof—or enough of them to serve his purposes—and Draco was with them. If he weren’t such a stupid, bleeding Gryffindor, so obsessed with being a hero and doing what he was told that he couldn’t see what was in front of his face, he’d have figured it out days ago.

“I’m coming, Dragon!” he called aloud to the boy who couldn’t possibly hear him, “I’m coming!” Then he spun on his heel and ran for the stairs.

 

Harry burst through the portrait hole, tore across the common room and up the spiral staircase to his dormitory, without breaking stride. He didn’t spare so much as a glance for his housemates, so he didn’t notice Ron and Hermione sitting at a table in the corner or see them look up in surprise. He was gone, up the stairs and out of sight, before they scrambled to follow.

Crossing the bedroom in two strides, Harry grabbed the book bag he’d packed so carefully just that morning and upended it on the bed. Parchment, quills, ink bottles, school books and a few desiccated beetles’ eyes skittered across the blanket. He shook it a few times to dislodge the last stale owl treat from the corner, then righted it and began rummaging in his trunk. He had his Firebolt in one hand and his invisibility cloak in the other when Ron and Hermione sidled into the room.

They approached him cautiously, eyes jumping between the broomstick and the pile of clothing on the bed.

“What are you doing, Harry?” Hermione asked.

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m leaving.”

“But the train doesn’t leave for London ’til tomorrow.”

“I’m not waiting for any train. And I’m not going back to King’s Cross.” He shoved a pair of socks and some pants into his bag, then rummaged around for a clean shirt. “The house-elves will get my trunk onto the train, but if you could take it with you to the Burrow and look after Hedwig for me…”

“Why? Where are you going?”

“The less you know about that, the better.”

Hermione bit her lip, tears starting in her eyes. “This is about Malfoy, isn’t it?”

Harry shot her a fierce, blazing look and crammed a handful of belongings into his bag so hard that he nearly tore the seams. “Of course it’s about Malfoy! What did you think, that I’d let Snape drag him out of here and do nothing to help? That I’d just _abandon him?!_ I’m going to Malfoy Manor to get him! Now, before it’s too late!”

“How do you figure to get there?” Ron demanded. “You don’t know how to apparate and you need McGonagall’s permission to use the floo…”

“I’ve got a broom, haven’t I?”

“Harry, you _can’t!_ ” Hermione wailed, bringing Harry’s head up with a jerk.

“Don’t fucking _tell_ me what I _can’t do!_ ” he snarled. “You don’t have a fucking clue!”

“Oi! That’s enough!” Ron crowded in between them and caught Harry’s arms, shoving him down onto the bed. “I know you’re scared, mate, but I won’t have you talking to Hermione that way.”

“You don’t know what they’re doing to him! How bad it is!”

Harry started to his feet again, but the other boy’s heavy hands on his shoulder held him down.

“Screaming at us isn’t going to fix it.”

Harry abruptly deflated, his rage turning to despair. His throat thickened and his eyes burned, but still no tears came. “I can’t just leave him there.”

“So you’re just going to blast your way into the Manor, grab Malfoy from under his parents’ noses, and fly off with him?”

“What else can I do?” Harry pleaded.

Ron’s kind, worried eyes gazed down at him for a moment, and Harry felt a wave of affection hit him. Poor Ron had spent two hideous days calling down bloody vengeance on Draco Malfoy for letting Fenrir Greyback into the castle to savage his brother. Finally, in desperation, Harry had told him about the Unbreakable Vow that had forced Draco’s hand. And now he was actually worried about that same Draco Malfoy. Harry loved him for it, even if he hated the words coming out of his mouth.

“You can’t take on Snape, Lucius and a mansion full of Death Eaters on your own. That’s for sure. And what about that bloody Vow?”

“He’s right, Harry,” Hermione whispered. “If you try to take Malfoy away from his parents now, you’ll end up getting both of you killed.”

“I’ll find a way to break the Vow…”

“Dumbledore couldn’t.”

Those words fell like a brick onto the floor between them, the thud of their landing echoing into silence. Harry took a long, shaky breath and let it out on a groan.

“They’re killing him. Lucius and Voldemort and Greyback… they’re _killing him._ I have to save him!”

“The only way to save him is to kill Voldemort. And to do that, you have to destroy the Horcruxes.” Hermione knelt on the floor at his feet, reaching to clasp his hands where they lay knotted together in his lap. “You know this, Harry. Dumbledore told you. It’s the only way out for Malfoy and for all of us.”

Harry ducked his head nearly to his knees as the knot of agony in his chest burst and, for the first time since Dumbledore’s fall, tears flooded his eyes.

Plopping onto the mattress beside him, Ron put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “We have to stick to the plan. Wait ’til you turn seventeen and lose the Trace, then go after the Horcruxes. Ferret’ll be okay ’til you come for him. He’s harder to kill than you think, and trust me, I know. I tried for years to get rid of the sodding rodent and couldn’t do it!”

Harry’s shoulders began to shake with sobs. Hot tears streamed down his cheeks. Something very like a keen rose in his throat.

Hermione’s clasp on his hands tightened. “We’ll help you, Harry, with all of it.”

With a gasped, “I know you will!” Harry collapsed sideways into Ron’s arms and wept. For Dumbledore. For Draco. For Bill Weasley’s scarred face. For Hagrid’s burning hut and Fang’s panicked howls. For the treasured home that had been defiled by evil and violence. It all rose in him on a black tide, and he wept as if his world were ending. Which it quite possibly was.

 

**_Finis_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of Part One, but not of the larger story. I broke it here because this is where Deathly Hallows happens, and I'm NOT going to rewrite the entire seventh book! So while you're waiting for me to post the next story, please imagine that the plot of Deathly Hallows is playing out, with our boys separated by the war.
> 
> The next story is coming very soon. It's called "Sins of the Flesh", and if you want to get a notice when I start publishing, please subscribe to the "In the Mirror" series.
> 
> Thank you all for reading!! I hope you enjoyed the story, and I hope you'll join me for the next one!


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